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ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 




Books by 

ORISON ROBBINS 


Each with picture jacket in full colors, and illus¬ 
trations by W. F. Stecher. 

A BOY OF OLD QUEBEC $1.75 

A BOY OF THE OLD FRENCH WEST $1.75 

ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS $1.75 

The Story of a Young Noble 
of New France. 


LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 

Boston 








He saw a group of Indians hacking at the door. 

Page 195. 





Escaping the Mohawks 

The Story of a Young Noble of New France 


By 

ORISON ROBBINS 


ILLUSTRATED BY 
W. F. STECHER 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 












Copyright, 1929, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 
All Rights Reserved 
Escaping the Mohawks 



Printed in U. S. A. 


SEP 18 1929 

V- 

©C1A 12453 




PREFACE 


One of the features that lends most charm 
to the short but stirring chapter that is the 
history of France in North America, is that 
of contrast. As one glances through the 
pages, one sees, here a black-robed priest, 
trained in the best schools of the Old World, 
sharing the discomforts and squalor of wig¬ 
wam or long house with the copper-hued 
owners; there a courtier, fresh from the 
luxuries of Versailles, bending beneath his 
heavy pack at a portage, or blistering his 
hands in the day-long drive with the paddle. 

New conditions in this new land moulded 
into strange forms the customs and institu¬ 
tions of the parent country. The institution 
of an aristocracy of birth was no exception 
to the rule. So we find nobles with the whine 
of beggars on their lips; and tenants, sturdy 
and self-reliant, who stood ready to buy the 
estates of their lords. Men rose or sank in 

5 


6 


PREFACE 


accordance with their ability to meet and 
master the hard conditions of a new life: the 
strong and capable survived; the weak dis¬ 
appeared. 

It is with the nobles of New France and 
their life on an exposed frontier that the 
present story is concerned. May it throw a 
little light into a not well-known nook of our 
early American life. 

Orison Robbins. 

Washington, D . C. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


He saw a group of Indians hacking 

at the door (Page 195) . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Waving his hand in greeting . . 64 

“ Stop!” the lad shouted . . . 198 

The treacherous ice broke under his 
weight s , . . s v . 260 




7 









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Escaping the Mohawks 

CHAPTER I 

Running close-hauled on the port-tack 
under full sail, the French sloop of war 
Superb drove swiftly through the short, 
choppy seas that ran in endless succession 
out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. She was 
not a large vessel, as ships go to-day; but her 
five hundred tons of wood and iron repre¬ 
sented the skill of the finest marine archi¬ 
tects of the early eighteenth century. Long, 
low of deck, with sharp keel and sharper 
bows, she might well have passed for one of 
the rakish craft that flew the Jolly Roger 
over the blue waters of the Caribbean, two 
thousand miles to the south. A second look 
would have corrected the mistake, however, 
for no free-lance of the seas could show such 
an air of smartness as marked every detail 
of the sloop. Taut rigging, shining paint, 
glistening brass work; all betokened the 

9 


10 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


care of a disciplined crew under the orders 
of a thorough seaman. 

A glance at the thick-set figure that stood 
on the quarter-deck, whose air of command, 
as well as dress, marked him as the comman¬ 
der of the ship, showed him to be such a 
seaman. Tanned to a dull red by the sun¬ 
shine and storms of half a century, his skin 
showed in startling contrast with the white 
and gold of his uniform. His eyes, small 
and deep-set, looked from beneath white, 
shaggy brows, glancing alternately at the 
sails of his ship and at the sky and sea to 
windward. 

With Pirard, for such was the name of 
the vessel’s commander, stood a lad of seven¬ 
teen and a man of twenty-two. The dress 
of the former was that of the French gentry: 
blue coat reaching to the knees, a long waist¬ 
coat of tan-colored velvet, knee trousers of 
material like the waistcoat, tan silk stock¬ 
ings, and black shoes with great silver 
buckles. A fluff of fine, white lace showed 
above the collar of his coat, and through the 
gap of his half-unbuttoned waistcoat. In 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 11 


one hand he held a three-cornered black hat 
of fine beaver. With the other he maintained 
a tight hold on one of the mizzen-shrouds, to 
steady himself against the sharp pitching of 
the ship. 

The lad’s attire marked him as a member 
of the nobility of his country, and his face 
was in keeping with his dress. A skin of 
olive hue, through which showed the rich red 
of his pure young blood; clean-cut features, 
sparkling black eyes, and long, glossy black 
hair which fell in a tumble of natural waves 
and curls about his shoulders, or blew 
straight out in the fresh breeze; while these 
did not necessarily indicate noble blood, they 
certainly were not inconsistent with its pos¬ 
session. 

The other man, Charles de La Motte by 
name, was in the white uniform of a lieuten¬ 
ant of the French army. Of moderate 
height and weight, he was typical of the class 
of young nobles from whom France drew 
the officers for her fighting forces. Equally 
at ease in the ballroom and on the field of 
battle, they met the foe, as they met the 


12 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


ladies, with smiles on their lips and jests on 
their tongues. Raised among the comforts, 
oftentimes amid the luxuries of which 
France boasted, no rigors of a strange clime, 
no fatigues of march, or toil at oar or paddle, 
could crush the exuberant spirit of these 
young soldiers. 

The younger man addressed the captain 
of the ship: “We drive ahead fast in this 
wind, Mr. Captain,” he said. “You told us 
as much as two hours ago that we were 
within fifty miles of the Island of Cape 
Breton. It seems to me we should soon see 
the land, especially as you say the part of 
the island we are approaching is covered 
with high hills.” 

“We should see the hills within an hour 
or two, Monsieur,” answered the captain re¬ 
spectfully. The officer was of the common 
people of his land. Therefore, as was the 
habit of his time and country, he looked up 
as to a superior to one who had the right to 
call himself “ noble.” 

The three relapsed into silence. The lad 
scanned the horizon ahead of the ship, hop- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 13 


ing to get the first glimpse of land. The 
captain’s attention, however, was given to 
the northwest, whence came the motive 
power of the great machine under his com¬ 
mand: the fresh breeze from the forests and 
mountains of Canada. Occasionally his 
gaze swept the sea to the east and south, and 
at such times a furrow of anxiety appeared 
in the ruddy skin of his forehead. Finally 
he turned again to his companions. 

“ Will Monsieur repeat again,” he said to 
the younger of them, “ as nearly as he can 
remember, the words he heard at the Marine 
Office in Paris regarding the sailing of the 
English squadron? ” 

“ I more than heard the words,” replied 
the lad. “ I saw the despatch that came 
from one of our secret agents in England. 
‘ Three vessels/ it read, 4 a sloop of war, a 
frigate, and a seventy-four, sailed from 
Southampton for the Newfoundland coast 
on the tenth of June.’ ” 

“ It is odd that I should have received no 
word of this,” said the captain, as he renewed 
his search of the waste of troubled waters. 


14 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

Methodical, devoted to his duty as he was, 
he could not conceive of a laxity in the con¬ 
duct of the affairs of the Marine Office that 
would fail to give the commander of a war¬ 
ship sailing to Canada such vital informa¬ 
tion. 

His young companion was better in¬ 
formed regarding the methods of the Ad¬ 
miralty. 

“ The note was probably put away in a 
pigeonhole/’ he said, “ and not remembered 
until after we had sailed.” 

“ No doubt Monsieur is right,” the cap¬ 
tain replied; and he resumed his search of 
the horizon. 

It was the middle of July, in the year 
1703. France was, as usual, at war with her 
ancient enemy, England. Nearly a month 
earlier, the Superb had left the port of 
Brest, bound for Quebec, where she was to 
relieve a vessel of similar rating. As a man- 
of-war, she carried no cargo. She was with¬ 
out passengers as well, except for part of a 
company of white-coated French infantry¬ 
men under the command of De La Motte, a 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 15 


meager reinforcement to the army in Can¬ 
ada; and, as a special favor, the lad whose 
acquaintance we have just made. 

Louis Dupuy was the boy’s name. The 
youngest of five children, he had been left an 
orphan at the age of ten. For seven years 
he had lived with his oldest brother on the 
family estate in Brittany, varying the mo¬ 
notony of country life with an occasional 
winter spent with a sister in Paris. Now he 
was responding to the invitation of an uncle, 
the Sieur Georges Dupuy, to join him on his 
seigniory on the Richelieu River. 

For an hour the Superb ran on, then the 
cry, “ Land ho! ” came ringing down from 
aloft. The heights of Cape Breton had 
come into view of the lookout, perched high 
on the foretopgallant-yard. Half an hour 
later, the blue hills, thirty miles distant, 
could be seen from the deck. 

Then another cry, “Sail ho!” sounded 
above the whistling and moaning of the wind 
in the ship’s cordage. 

Instantly every one on deck was alert. 

“ Where away? ” bawled the sailing- 


16 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


master, a weather-beaten old tar who had 
immediate charge of the operation of the 
vessel. 

“ Two points off the port bow, sir,” came 
the answer, indicating a direction about 
twenty degrees to leeward of the line on 
which the vessel was running. 

“ Send the lookout aft,” said the captain 
to the master. Then, turning to his com¬ 
panions, he continued: “We must find out 
all we can about this stranger. He may be 
one of our three Englishmen. Any large 
sail in these waters must be looked upon with 
suspicion.” 

The lookout appeared, hat in hand, but 
hesitated to set foot on that, to him, forbid¬ 
den place, the quarter-deck. At a signal 
from the captain, however, he slouched for¬ 
ward. 

V - 

“ How far away is the sail you saw? ” 
asked the officer. 

“ Her topmasts are showing above the 
water, sir,” the sailor replied. 

“ What sail does she carry? ” 

* 

“ None that I could see,” was the reply, 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 17 


“ except perhaps a staysail. She looked as 
though she might be lying-to under her 
lower sails.” 

“ How many masts has she? ” 

“ Three.” 

“ Very well, my man. Here is a louis 
d’or for you,” said the captain, giving him a 
small gold coin. “ Your eyes are good to 
make out the naked spars of a vessel fifteen 
miles away.” 

The sailor pulled his forelock, scraped an 
awkward bow of acknowledgment, and de¬ 
parted to declare among his mates that such 
a fine and generous officer as Captain Pirard 
did not exist outside that ship, never had ex¬ 
isted, and in all the future of the world never 
would exist again. 

The captain, however, was thinking of 
other things than the effect of his generosity 
upon the lookout and his fellows. He stood 
for a moment with his head bowed in 
thought, then calling sharply to the sailing- 
master, directed him to tack. That worthy 
officer looked at his superior in astonishment, 
a feeling that was reflected in the faces of 


18 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


all who heard the captain’s words. No ques¬ 
tions were asked, however; orders are not 
questioned on a well-regulated man-of-war. 
Discipline, however, could not prevent the 
master from muttering to his crony, the 
boatswain, that it beat all that he had ever 
seen or expected to see, if he lived a hundred 
years, that such a fighter as the “ old man ” 
should run away from a strange sail without 
even having a look at her from the deck. 

Despite the surprise that the order caused, 
it was carried out promptly and efficiently. 
Obedient to her helm, the graceful vessel 
swung into the wind. The heavy yards 
swung round, the head-sails filled, and the 
Superb heeled far to starboard. In another 
moment, she was off on her new course, head¬ 
ing almost due north. 

If discipline suppressed any open expres¬ 
sion of astonishment on the part of the offi¬ 
cers and crew at the sudden change in the 
course of the vessel, it placed no such re¬ 
straint upon the tongue of young Louis 
Dupuy. Presuming upon his rank, he ad¬ 
dressed the captain. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 19 


“ Is it customary,” he asked, “ for His 
Majesty’s men-of-war to turn tail without 
finding out whether they are running from 
a two-decker or a fishing boat? ” 

The officer’s ruddy countenance flushed a 
deeper red at the taunt in the lad’s question. 
He controlled himself, however, and replied 
in level tones: “ Monsieur is new to the ways 
of ships and cannot be expected to under¬ 
stand their actions. Fishing boats do not 
carry three masts, and merchant vessels do 
not lie-to in a fair breeze such as is blowing. 
Only a man-of-war, trying to maintain a 
station, would act as this sail does. The note 
you saw in Paris stated that three English 
ships had sailed to these waters: a sloop, a 
frigate, and a ship of the line. This is, no 
doubt, one of them.” 

“ Then why not run in close enough to 
find out if it is the sloop of war? ” said 
Louis. “ If so, it would be a fair fight for 
both of us.” 

“ The English are not likely to hunt 
singly,” the captain replied. “ We have 
been seen in the past two days by half a 


20 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


dozen fishing vessels. If the English ships 
are patrolling these waters, they have prob¬ 
ably had word of our arrival already. 
No,” he continued after a moment’s pause, 
“ to engage that fellow now would be to play 
his own game. The Superb can outpoint 
him and outrun him, unless he is better than 
any English ship I have ever met. If he 
follows us, we will work up to windward of 
him, and then, if he is still alone, I promise 
Monsieur the Superb will show that she is 
sharp of tooth as well as fleet of foot.” 

That the stranger had no intention of let¬ 
ting the French vessel get away without a 
chase was evident as soon as the latter 
changed its course. A cloud of white canvas 
was spread over the hitherto bare spars, and, 
in less than five minutes after the Superb 
had headed northward, the Englishman, if 
such he should prove to be, was coursing in 
the same direction. 

The stranger’s topgallantsails—like the 
Superb , she carried no royals—were visible 
from the deck with the naked eye, so clear 
was the air from the Canadian wilds. Cap- 



/ 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 21 

tain Pirard watched the three white sheets 
with a thoughtful countenance. Occasion¬ 
ally, he checked their bearing by the ship’s 
compass. After half an hour had passed in 
silence, he spoke to Louis. 

“We are outsailing him,” he said. “ We 
are holding him steady as to distance, for his 
topsails are still out of sight, and we are sail¬ 
ing at least half a point nearer the wind than 
he is. There are still three hours of day¬ 
light. If, at the end of two hours, this fel¬ 
low is still alone, the Superb will show her 
teeth.” 


CHAPTER II 


The great orb of the sun, sinking in a 
cloudless west, glowered at the equally great 
orb of the moon as it rose in the cloudless 
east. Then, as the sun’s rim touched the 
horizon, two cries of “ Sail ho!” came 
almost simultaneously from aloft. Two 
ships had come in sight, one to the north¬ 
east, the other nearly east. They were about 
twenty miles away, and were heading to the 
west, on the opposite tack from the Superb. 

At the appearance of these two strangers, 
the thoughtfulness that had marked the face 
of Captain Pirard since the discovery of the 
vessel to the southwest, deepened to a look 
of anxiety. He turned to Louis who, as the 
privileged character aboard, still shared the 
quarter-deck with him. 

“ The man who wrote the note you saw in 
Paris was evidently well informed,” he said. 
“We have now accounted for all three of the 
English squadron. I judge, from the size 

22 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 23 

of his sails, that the fellow to the west is the 
sloop of war. Which of the others is the 
frigate, and which the ship of the line, we 
shall soon know.” 

Half an hour later, the two ships to the 
east were visible from the Superb’s deck, 
their graceful upper sails gleaming white 
against the darkening sky. The more north¬ 
erly of the pair still held to his western 
course, apparently with the intention of 
heading off the French ship. The other had 
tacked, and was running to the north, par¬ 
allel to the course of the Superb . 

“ The English have sprung their trap,” 
Pirard said after a long examination of the 
surrounding enemies, for enemies they were. 
“ They have effectively blocked us in 
every direction except possibly one. The 
ship to the northeast is a frigate. If we can 
cross her bows unscathed, we shall have a 
clear path ahead of us. Then, with all our 
enemies behind us, we can trust to the 
Superb to show them a clean pair of heels.” 

The captain again relapsed into a 
thoughtful silence. At frequent intervals he 


24 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


studied the three strangers through a glass. 
At length he sent a cabin-boy in search of 
the sailing-master. When that worthy ar¬ 
rived, the commander went aside and en¬ 
gaged him in a long, earnest conversation. 
As a result, a swarm of seamen clambered 
up the shrouds, and, with a maze of lines, 
reinforced all the lighter parts of the rig¬ 
ging, as if to stand some unusual strain. 

When this work was completed to the 
satisfaction of even the critical sailing- 
master, the call to quarters was sounded. A 
period of apparent confusion followed, when 
every person in the ship seemed to be on the 
run, and every tongue to be wagging. In 
reality, it was a period of intense, ordered 
activity. At its close, the twenty-two 
twelve-pounders on the Superb’s main deck 
had been loosened from their lashings, and 
were loaded ready for use, the gun-crews at 
their sides. Magazines stood open, with 
powder-boys ready to carry their deadly 
contents to the gun-loaders. Marines, and 
the company of infantrymen, stood in or¬ 
dered array on the quarter-deck. Topmen 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 25 


were at their stations in the “ tops,” pre¬ 
pared for their double task of working the 
upper sails, and of pouring a fire of mus¬ 
ketry down on an enemy’s deck, if he should 
come to close quarters. 

When the bustle and confusion of prepar¬ 
ing the ship for action had subsided, Louis 
turned to Captain Pirard. 

“ Every one but me seems to have a duty 
assigned to him,” he said. “ I should not 
like to be an idler when we come into action. 
Have you a place for me where I can be of 
use? ” 

The captain seemed pleased with the lad’s 
offer, but he also seemed somewhat puzzled. 

“ I should be pleased to use Monsieur,” 
he said, “ but just where-” and he hes¬ 

itated. 

Lieutenant de La Motte, who stood at his 
side, hastened to relieve him of his embar¬ 
rassment. 

“ I should be glad to have your help with 
my men,” he said to Louis. “ They are a 
green lot, not more than ten real soldiers in 
the whole forty of them. If you will take 



26 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


charge of half of them, perhaps between us 
we can keep them in some kind of order. 
Would that arrangement be satisfactory to 
you, Captain? ” 

“ Entirely so,” answered the officer. “ If 
we should come to close quarters, a heavy 
fire of musketry might be of great help to 
us. I hope, however, to keep the English¬ 
man at a distance. I judge from his size 
that he carries at least thirty-six guns, 
eighteen-pounders, no doubt. At close 
range, the Superb would be simply crushed 
by his fire.” 

With the going down of the sun, the wind, 
already a fresh, whole sail breeze, gradually 
increased in force until it became almost a 
gale. Under its impulse, the Superb and the 
English frigate rapidly decreased the dis¬ 
tance between them. Both staggered under 
the load of canvas they carried, but as the 
capture or escape of the French sloop de¬ 
pended wholly upon the relative speed of 
these two enemies, neither would shorten 
sail. 

The Superb's sailing-master cast many an 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 27 

anxious glance at his topgallants, and at 
their slender masts, bending and creaking 
under the unusual strain. Thanks to the 
precautions taken in advance, however, 
everything held. 

The frigate was not so lucky. Rising 
from the effect of a heavy gust that laid her 
over until her lee rail was almost awash, she 
met another tremendous blast. Before the 
heavy mass could yield to the pressure, the 
mizzentopgallant-mast snapped short off. 

Before this accident to her most danger¬ 
ous opponent, it had been uncertain whether 
the Superb would win her race to the point 
where the courses of the two ships crossed. 
Now the Englishman’s speed was slackened. 
More important still, due to the loss of his 
after sails, he was unable to maintain his 
former course, but fell off more to the south. 
The Superb would cross his bows, but by a 
margin of little more than half a mile. 

The captain walked forward, past the 
gun-crews that stood waiting beside their 
twelve-pounders. The guns were ready for 
the touch of the matches that should dis- 


I 


28 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

charge them, but so great was the heel of the 
vessel under the pressure of the wind, that 
they pointed directly into the water that 
foamed under the ship’s rail. The greatest 
elevation that could be obtained, with the 
crude sighting devices of the time, failed to 
bring the pieces to bear on the fast-ap¬ 
proaching target. 

“ Why so downhearted, lads? ” asked the 
captain cheerily, as he noted a glum expres¬ 
sion on the faces of the sturdy sailors. 

“ It is enough to make a gunner feel 
downhearted, sir,” answered an old salt who 
had sailed for years with Captain Pirard and 
presumed on old acquaintanceship to answer 
freely. “ Here we are, fast getting into 
position to rake this Englishman at easy 
range, and not a gun will bear. If we were 
out on the open sea, now, the roll of the ship 
would give us a chance for a broadside.” 

“ Well, Jack, I will give you one shot at 
him,” said the captain, “ but make that one 
count. You won’t get another.” He turned 
to the junior officer who commanded the 
gun-crews. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 29 

“ As we cross the frigate’s bows,” he said, 
“ I will luff until everything is shaking. As 
the ship rights herself, fire every gun in the 
broadside. Aim at the rigging. I cannot 
give you time for a second broadside, for we 
must not lose our headway. See that the 
men all understand the arrangement, for 
they will have only a few seconds of time for 
aiming and firing.” 

Night was falling fast. Already the 
shadows of the rigging could be traced on 
the Superb’s decks, in the moonlight that 
mingled with the fading twilight. The su¬ 
preme test was at hand. The captain, back 
on the quarter-deck, made a final survey of 
the situation. 

To the northeast was the frigate, now less 
than a mile away, lying far over under the 
increasing force of the wind, her black hull 
half hidden by a cloud of spray thrown off 
from her bows. To the east, the seventy- 
four had disappeared in the gathering 
gloom. In the southwest was the English 
sloop, her topgallants silhouetted against the 
afterglow in the sky. 


30 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The Superb crossed the frigate’s course. 
As she did so, she swung sharply into the 
wind. Amid a tremendous roar of slatting 
sails and thrashing tackle, the ship came to 
an even keel. Then followed an even 
greater roar, that of the eleven guns in her 
broadside. Great spikes of flame, white-hot 
in the half-light, leaped from the Superb's 
side, and were transformed into clouds of 
fleecy vapor that raced madly to leeward. 
Then the head of the vessel swung away 
from the wind, and she resumed her course, 
almost without loss of speed. 

With a night-glass, Captain Pirard 
watched the effect of his fire. Three or four ‘ 
shot-holes appeared in the frigate’s head- 
sails, a few loose rope-ends blew straight out 
to leeward; then, with a crash that was heard 
even on the Superb, her foreyard gave way. 
A lucky shot had severed one of the braces, 
another had cut half through the timber it¬ 
self, and the remaining wood was unable to 
stand the terrific strain to which it was sub¬ 
jected. As the frigate’s great foresail and 
foretopsail collapsed with the yard, a trium- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 31 

phant cheer arose from the deck of the 
French sloop. Certainly Fortune had thus 
far been on the side of the Superb. If only 
she would continue to smile for another five 
minutes, the sloop would be safe. 

Fortune is proverbially fickle. The frig¬ 
ate was now definitely out of the chase, but 
as she forged slowly ahead, she put the fly¬ 
ing Superb directly under her guns. For¬ 
tunately for the latter, the range was now 
much greater than that at which she had 
fired her own broadside, but the number and 
weight of her enemy’s guns made her posi¬ 
tion extremely dangerous. It was not so 
much that she was likely to be completely 
disabled, but with the dark sails of the 
English sloop still showing above the west¬ 
ern sky line, and with the ship of the line 
present, though invisible, an unfortunate hit 
in the rigging might mean capture. 

The frigate’s eighteen-pounders fired as 
they bore on the sloop; first a bow gun, fol¬ 
lowed by three of the forward broadside 
guns singly, then with a tremendous crash 
by a dozen more. To Louis Dupuy, stand- 


32 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


ing with the men who had been assigned to 
his charge, this was the baptism of fire. To 
him, it seemed that a tornado of iron was 
sweeping down upon the Superb. A crash 
at his side told of a wrecked gun-carriage, 
great flying splinters of wood that barely 
missed him were thrown off from the rail, 
while overhead rushed a half-dozen heavy 
balls. It required the combination of all the 
lad’s pride and self-control to keep from 
ducking, for they seemed barely to miss his 
head. In fact, they were as high as the 
maintop. 

v 

The attention of Captain Pirard was fixed 
on his rigging, and his ears were strained to 
catch the sound of impact of iron on the 
wooden spars. All too soon the sound came, 
and directly overhead. In the full-rigged 
ships of that time, a great lateen sail was 
carried on the mizzenmast, in place of the 
spanker of a later date. The hit was in the 
spar that supported this sail. Spar and sail 
crashed to the deck. 

An instant later, the foretopgallant-sail, 
weakened by a shot-hole, blew to shreds. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 33 


The captain took the loss of these two 
sails philosophically. 

“ If we get off with nothing worse than 
this, we are lucky,” he said to Louis, whose 
assigned position was near him. “ The wind 
is getting so strong that we should have had 
to shorten sail soon, in any case. With the 
lateen gone, we can’t point quite as high into 
the wind as we have been doing, but we will 
get along.” 

In the time required for reloading the 
frigate’s guns, the Superb so increased the 
distance separating her from her powerful 
enemy that the latter’s second broadside fell 
harmlessly into the sea. 

“ Now we must look out for the English 
sloop,” said the captain. “ With our loss of 
two important sails, she will probably over¬ 
haul us. Then we shall fight.” 

The crew was now called from the guns 
and set to work to repair the damage to the 
rigging. A spare lateen yard was got up, 
and the sail bent to it and set. A new fore¬ 
topgallant was bent to the yard, but was not 
set. The main and mizzen topgallants were 


34 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


furled, as well as the spritsail, a square sail 
carried by ships of that time under the bow¬ 
sprit, in place of jibs. Relieved of the pres¬ 
sure of her loftiest sails, the Superb rode 
more easily, though she was still making 
nearly ten knots. 

While the sailing-master, with a coolness 
and efficiency born of long experience, was 
making good the damage to the sloop’s rig¬ 
ging, the captain, with his night-glass, swept 
the southwestern quarter of the horizon. 
With the falling of night, the English sloop 
had been lost to sight. 

Two hours passed. At the end of that 
time, the sailing-master reported the Superb 
as again fit for fight or flight. Even the in¬ 
jured gun-carriage had been repaired, and 
the sloop could again show her full number 
of twenty-two teeth. 

It is time the Englishman was coming,” 
said the captain, somewhat anxiously. “ I 
hope he intends to fight to-night. If he 
should keep on, close-hauled as he was when 
we saw him last, morning might find him to 
windward of us, for we lost a good deal of 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 35 


ground while our damage was being re¬ 
paired. In that case, we should be caught 
between the sloop and the ship of the line.” 

Captain Pirard’s fears were soon dis¬ 
pelled. A pyramid of canvas, ghostly white 
in the moonlight, appeared at a distance of 
two miles, over the Superb's port beam. In 
spite of the force of the wind, the English 
sloop still carried her topgallants, for only 
so could she hope to close with the speedy 
Frenchman. So, tearing through the 
choppy seas at a tremendous pace, the 
English ship bore down upon the Superb . 


CHAPTER III 


As the English sloop made clear her in¬ 
tent to fight, the captain of the Superb 
heaved a sigh of relief. 

“Ah! Matters could not have been ar¬ 
ranged more to my liking,” he said to his 
young companion. “ Unless this English¬ 
man is different from most of that race I 
have met, he will come down, bows on, until 
he gets to point-blank range. Then he will 
try to crush us with his broadsides. Your 
Briton is a brave fighter, and such tactics 
have won him many battles. But fore¬ 
warned is forearmed, and we shall know how 
to deal with him. I think from his looks he 
is nearly a quarter heavier than we. He 
probably has some eighteens mixed with his 
twelve-pounders, and, no doubt, he carries a 
larger crew than we do. We must try to 
dismast him before he gets to close quar¬ 
ters.” 

With these words the captain left the 

36 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 37 


quarter-deck and again inspected the gun¬ 
crews. Now a sense of elation was evident 
among these hardy seamen. The telling ef¬ 
fect of their single broadside upon the frig¬ 
ate, with the subsequent escape of the 
Superb from her heavy antagonist, had 
given them an assurance that their comman¬ 
der, in spite of his cheering words, did not 
fully share. Pirard recognized that he was 
still fighting against heavy odds, in that the 
loss of one of his tall, tapering masts would 
be fatal. His opponent, backed by his heavy 
consorts, labored under no such handicap. 

When the Englishman was a mile away, 
the Superb shortened sail still further until 
she was in battle trim, under topsails only. 
The English sloop took in only her topgal¬ 
lants, preferring to keep her lower sails set, 
to bring her quickly to close quarters. 

At a range of half a mile, the Superb 
poured her broadside full into her enemy’s 
bows. There was now no handicap to her 
gunners other than the lack of daylight. 
Even this was largely overcome by the bril¬ 
liant moonlight. With a steady deck, and a 


38 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


target glowing in the white light, there was 
little excuse for a miss. 

The Englishman, however, was lucky, and 
suffered nothing from this first discharge, 
other than perforated sails and a few cut 
lines. His spars were untouched, and he 
continued to come on as rapidly as ever. 

After the ordered discharge of her first 
broadside, the guns of the Superb were fired 
at will. This meant that every gun-crew 
was in competition with every other one, as 
to the number of shots it could fire. Men, 
stripped to the waist, checked, with block 
and tackle, the recoil of the heavy guns. 
Others thrust into the still smoking muzzles 
the cleansing swabs, then forced in bags of 
powder brought from open magazines by 
sweating, racing powder-boys. Then fol¬ 
lowed the round iron shot. Block and tackle 
again were brought into play to run the guns 
back into position. A blinding flash and a 
deafening roar were to these men only the 
signals for a repetition of the deadly proc¬ 
esses. 

Captain Pirard, back on the quarter-deck, 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 39 


watched the effect of his fire with some 
anxiety. His opponent was now only a 
scant quarter of a mile away, and was com¬ 
ing on like a race-horse. At any instant the 
officer expected to see him swing around to a 
course parallel to his own. He disliked to 
think what the effect of the first broadside, 
delivered at such close range, was likely to 
be. 

The rapid, well-directed fire of the Superb 
was beginning to tell, however. First the 
Englishman’s spritsail-yard was shot away. 
A moment later it was followed by the main- 
topmast. Then, just as he was about to luff 
to bring his broadside to bear, a shot went 
through his mizzenmast, close to the deck. 
A second cut the weather mizzen-shrouds, 
and the mast toppled over the side. 

Crippled as he now was, with the loss of 
half his top-hamper, but one chance of vic¬ 
tory remained for the English commander. 
There was still a possibility of capturing the 
Superb by boarding. Carried on by his 
great courses and foretopsail, he headed 
straight for the French sloop, and in spite 


40 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


of the efforts of the latter to avoid contact, 
ran her aboard. 

The impact of the collision was terrific. 
Louis Dupuy and the soldiers assigned to 
him were thrown to the deck. As they 
scrambled to their feet, thirty men, armed 
with pikes and cutlasses, dropped from the 
bowsprit of the English sloop to the Superb's 
quarter-deck, while half a dozen sailors ran 
out on the spar to lash it to their enemy’s 
mizzenmast. 

Before Louis and his little band had fully 
recovered their balance after the collision, 
the English were upon them. To the 
French lad, the shock of a charge was an 
entirely new experience. He had engaged 
in many friendly bouts with the sword, but 
they were for points, not blood. He had 
twice this day watched the effect of well- 
aimed broadsides from his own ship upon 
enemy vessels. But the combats of ships 
are impersonal, and the shots fired, deadly 
though they may be, are aimed, not at in¬ 
dividuals but at machines. 

Though such thoughts flashed through his 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 41 

brain, Louis had not an instant to dwell 
upon them. A sturdy English lieutenant 
was almost upon him, the blade of his cutlass 
glistening in the moonlight. Louis barely 
had time to draw his sword and parry a 
thrust at his breast. The lad was a good 
fencer and, for a few seconds, was able to 
match his skill against his opponent’s greater 
strength. His followers were too few, how¬ 
ever, to withstand the superior numbers of 
the English, reenforced as the latter were 
by a steady stream of boarders that poured 
over their bowsprit. Such of the handful of 
Frenchmen as were not struck down were 
pressed back toward the stern of the vessel. 

Louis himself was on the point of being 
surrounded when, with a rush like that of a 
powerful football team, a mass of nearly a 
hundred men, led by Lieutenant de La 
Motte, charged down the deck from forward. 
There was no resisting such an assault. 
Half the Englishmen went down and were 
trampled under foot. The rest, including 
Louis’ opponent, were literally swept into 
the sea whence, a minute later, they could be 


42 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

I 

seen climbing like great beetles up the side 
of their own vessel. 

Louis almost shared the fate of the Eng¬ 
lish leader. He was, indeed, carried over the 
rail, but he managed to get a hold with one 
hand on the mizzen rigging as he went over 
and to clamber back on deck. 

Meantime, the part of the Superb's crew 
not engaged in repelling boarders was not 
idle. Obedient to their captain’s urgent com¬ 
mands, they sprang into the rigging. In an 
instant the great fore and main courses were 
set. A volley of musketry swept away the 
English sailors who attempted to lash the 
ships together, and a few strokes of sharp 
cutlasses severed the fastenings already 
made. Under the impulse of her heavy load 
of canvas, the Superb drew away from her 
antagonist. 

That antagonist was now, however, no 
longer to be feared. With mizzenmast and 
maintop-mast dragging in the water, the 
English sloop was out of control, and the 
nimble Superb , again under topsails, raked 
her at will. No attempt was made further 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 43 

to cripple the rigging; that job had been 
well done. Instead, the heavy balls were 
sent the length of the Englishman’s deck, 
overturning guns and smashing boats and 
rails. Showers of grape-shot followed, deci¬ 
mating the gun-crews and the sailors who 
hacked and cut at the tangled wreckage of 
rigging. The captain fell, the first lieu¬ 
tenant was swept overboard by a twelve- 
pound ball, and the command devolved upon 
the young officer who had led the boarders. 
Helpless in his crippled ship, but one course 
was open to him. The colors having already 
gone down with the fallen rigging, the white 
flag of surrender was raised. The fire of the 
Superb ceased and she ranged alongside her 
prize, riding easily with a backed topsail at 
a distance of fifty yards. Through a speak¬ 
ing-trumpet, Captain Pirard addressed the 
unfortunate English lieutenant: 

“ Monsieur has made a brave fight,” he 
said with French courtesy, “ but the fortune 
of war was against him. Monsieur sur¬ 
renders his ship and I accept the surrender, 
but I shall not take possession. No doubt 


44 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Monsieur’s consorts will soon arrive to give 
him any assistance he may need. Adieu.” 

Much as Captain Pirard would have liked 
to take his prize into port, or at least to 
remove her crew and blow her up, he felt 
that he could not safely take time even to 
wait for a boat to bring her commander 
aboard to make his submission. Indeed, even 
as he waved his farewell, a great cloud of 
snow-white canvas appeared in the north¬ 
east, the English two-decker coming too late 
to the rescue of her consort. 

Pirard again put the trumpet to his lips. 

“ Monsieur’s consort will arrive very 
soon,” he called in his most pleasant tone. 
“ Will Monsieur extend to her commander 
my compliments? And again, adieu.” 

A hundred dark forms sprang into the 
Superb's rigging, and as a sea-gull extends 
her pinions, so did she spread her white sails. 
Then, bowing to the force of the breeze, 
graceful as a girl in a classic dance, she 
gathered way and sped quickly out of reach 
of her powerful, but slow new neighbor. 


CHAPTER IV 


On the eastern bank of the Richelieu, the 
fine river that drains the great basin of 
Champlain and Lake George into the St. 
Lawrence, could have been seen, at the time 
of our story, a dozen or more rude farms, 
some fifty miles above the mouth of the 
river. The smaller stumps in the rough 
fields had been grubbed out, but the larger 
ones had not only defied all attempts to re¬ 
move them, but by sending up new shoots 
from their roots, threatened to replace the 
losses which nature had suffered from the 
hands of man. Among the stumps on the 
largest of these farms, a variety of grains 
was ripening. Oats, with willowy grace, 
bowed their heads, as if in silent invitation 
to the sickle of the reaper. Wheat and bar¬ 
ley thrust their bearded faces defiantly up¬ 
ward. Maize, or Indian corn, displayed, in 
regal splendor, feathery crowns of gold, and 
swelling silk-tasseled fruitage. 

Extending into the water was a short, 

45 


46 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


rude wharf, consisting of a few posts and 
hewn timbers. From this structure a path 
led for a hundred yards through a field of 
barley to a two-story house, flanked at a dis¬ 
tance of a hundred yards by a barn and one 
or two minor buildings. All were built of 
logs, except that the first story and ample 
basement wall of the house were of stone. 

As we shall perhaps spend some little time 
in this house, it will be well to give it a sec¬ 
ond look. The first story was about twenty- 
five feet wide, and half again as long. The 
stone walls, two feet thick, were provided 
with a doorway in each end, and three win¬ 
dows on each side. Doors and shutters 
were of oaken planks, four inches thick. 
There was no glass in the windows. The 
second story was of hewn oak logs, sea¬ 
soned to a hardness almost like that of the 
supporting stones. The most noticeable 
feature of this superstructure was that, on 
all sides, it projected nearly four feet be¬ 
yond the first story. The whole structure 
was covered with a gable roof of hand-made 
pine shingles. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 47 

As the reader has already suspected, this 
structure was not only a residence but a 
place of defense, a little wilderness fort. 
Loopholes for musketry pierced the stone 
walls, as well as the oak floor of the project¬ 
ing area. Set in the ridge of the roof were 
two hatchways. In the attic, beneath them, 
were a half-dozen barrels, kept always full 
of water, for use in extinguishing fires. 
Around the house, for a distance of a hun¬ 
dred yards, every tree and stump had been 
removed, lest it should afford shelter within 
musket range to a stealthy foe. 

Within, as well as without, the house and 
its furnishings revealed its double character: 
a place of abode and of defense. Half of 
the first-floor area served at once as a living- 
room and dining-room for very special occa¬ 
sions. The remainder was occupied by a 
kitchen, and a bedroom for the master of the 
house. The second story was divided into 
bedrooms, while the attic served as a store¬ 
room. The basement was used as a root- 
cellar, and, in times of danger, as a place of 
safety for the cattle not only of this, but of 


48 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


neighboring farms. Over the great stone 
fireplace in the living-room, in fact, in every 
room, muskets and rifles rested on wooden 
pegs, while full powder-horns and bullet- 
pouches swung below them, ready for instant 
use. 

The semi-military character of the house 
was shared by its master. As he sat in an 
armchair before a small fire that snapped 
and crackled in the fireplace, and puffed 
contentedly at a stone-bowled pipe of native 
Indian make, he seemed the embodiment of 
domestic comfort. However, only one leg 
was stretched toward the warmth of the fire. 
The other, from the knee down, had been 
left on some field of battle and had been re¬ 
placed by one of wood. Moreover, a glance 
at the walls of the master’s bedroom would 
have revealed, among rough garments of 
homespun and fur, the uniform of a captain 
of the famous regiment Carignan. 

The occupant of the great armchair was, 
in fact, the Sieur Georges Dupuy, whose 
invitation had brought his nephew Louis 
from Paris to the New World. Thirty years 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 49 

earlier, unfitted for active military service 
by the loss of his leg, he had been given by 
the king a grant of land on the Richelieu, 
together with the privileges and duties of a 
seignior. The privileges were few, and of 
little real value; but the duties were many 
and onerous. As the early Norman kings of 
England appointed “ Earls of the Marches,” 
to defend their frontiers, so did the French 
government in Canada most thriftily estab¬ 
lish advanced posts of defense by placing its 
retired military officers on “ seigniories.” 
Here, with little or no aid from the govern¬ 
ment, the owners were required to establish 
and defend little communities that should 
serve as bulwarks to the larger towns. 

Though the master of the seigniory on 
the Richelieu combined military with domes¬ 
tic attributes, there was no such admixture 
of qualities apparent in the little lady who 
shared with him the comfort of the crackling 
fire. Though clad in simple homespun like 
her husband, for such was the relation of the 
seignior to her, Madame Lucille Dupuy 
showed but little the effects of long years 


50 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


spent amid the hardships and deprivations 
of the frontier. Her face was one of peace 
and refinement, true expression of a noble 
nature within. 

“ I wish you would read Louis’ letter 
again, Georges,” the little lady said. “ I 
think I know every word in it, but I want 
to hear it once more.” 

The seignior, in compliance, rose, and in 
spite of the handicap of his wooden leg, 
walked spryly, without the help of a cane, 
to a cupboard at the side of the room. Re¬ 
turning with a pair of great, horn-bowed 
spectacles and a folded paper, he adjusted 
the former to his nose, and read aloud, for 
the tenth time, the contents of the letter. 
This was a note written by Louis on the slow 
journey by boat from Quebec to Montreal, 
apprising his relatives of his safe arrival in 
Canada. At the end was a foot-note, stat¬ 
ing that he expected to reach the seigniory 
on the tenth day of August. 

As the date was read, a pucker of per¬ 
plexity wrinkled the brow of Madame Lu¬ 
cille. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 51 


“Are you sure the messenger who brought 
the letter doesn’t know when Louis is to 
leave Montreal? ” she asked. 

“ No, Lucille,” her husband answered, “ I 
have asked him half a dozen times, and he 
is certain not a word was said about the time 
of starting. Louis, of course, thought we 
would have a calendar here, and didn’t think 
it necessary to do more than give the date of 
his arrival.” 

“ If he had only given the day of the week 
instead of the day of the month,” said the 
woman. For a few minutes she sat in deep 
thought, her chin in her hand. Then her 
face brightened. 

“ I have it,” she said. “ Our good priest, 
Father Gregory, was with us a week ago last 
Sunday. He said that the fifth Wednesday 
from that time would be the sixty-fifth 
birthday of his Majesty, our king. The 
birthday is the fifth of September. So you 
see, the Wednesday before that will be the 
twenty-ninth of August, the one before that 
will be the twenty-second; before that the 
fifteenth, and before that the eighth. That 


52 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


was yesterday, because this is Thursday. So 
this is the ninth of August, and Louis will 
be here to-morrow.’’ 

Having cleverly substituted brains for the 
more convenient calendars of our modern 
homes, Madame Lucille turned to specula¬ 
tions regarding the appearance, habits, and 
manners of her nephew, whom, of course, she 
had never seen. Her thoughts, and the 
happy chatter that accompanied them, were 
interrupted by the arrival of a third person. 

In appearance, the newcomer was in 
marked contrast with the master of the 
house. The seignior was of large and heavy 
build, with a round, florid face, somewhat 
lengthened by a pointed gray beard that pro- 
jected below his heavy mustaches. The 
other was of moderate height, thin almost to 
leanness, but with an elasticity of step that 
indicated unusual strength. His face was 
partly concealed by a light beard, jet black 
like his hair, in spite of the fifty years of 
their owner. 

With the easy familiarity of one assured 
of his welcome, the hunter, for such he 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 58 


seemed to be, placed the long rifle he carried 
in a corner of the room, removed his powder- 
horn and bullet-pouch, and hung them on a 
peg, then drew a chair to the fire. 

“ Well, Sergeant, how was the hunting? ” 
asked the seignior. 

“ I got two good bucks and a half-grown 
fawn,” was the reply. “ They are in my 
canoe. I told Jacques, your man, to dress 
them for you.” 

At the mention of the game, Madame 
Lucille almost clapped her hands. 

“ Sergeant,” she said, “ I don’t know 
what we should do without you. You always 
seem to bring the solution to my problems. 
I told you, you will remember, some weeks 
ago that our nephew was coming from 
France to live with us. Well, he will arrive 
to-morrow. I want to have a real feast for 
him when he comes, and there isn’t a thing 
in the pantry but salt pork, flour, and corn- 
meal. Now, with the venison you brought, 
corn and vegetables from the garden, and 
berries and plums which I can get in the 
woods, we shall have a dinner that even a 


54 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


young man fresh from court need not de¬ 
spise.’' 

“ Well, there will be venison enough, at 
any rate,” replied the one who had been ad¬ 
dressed as Sergeant. “ One of those bucks 
must weigh nearly a hundred and fifty 
pounds. As for the berries and plums, I 
will look after them. You will have your 
hands full here in the house.” 

“ Let us invite our cousins, the Sieur de 
La Ronde, and his wife,” said the seignior. 
“ We haven’t seen them for half a year, and 
I have heard Madame has been none too 
well. A little change from their miserable 
existence will do her good. It is only ten 
miles up the river. I can get there and back 
in a canoe before dark.” 

“ By all means, let us have them here,” ex¬ 
claimed Madame Lucille. “And we must 
have their bright-eyed daughter Margaret, 
too, so that Louis will not be lonely among 
so many old people. If the sergeant is will¬ 
ing,” she continued, “ I would suggest also 
that you take along a saddle of venison. 
Now that the last of De La Ronde’s sons has 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 55 


run away to the western lakes, I fear that 
there is none too much for the old people 
and their daughter to eat.” 

The sergeant expressed his approval of 
this arrangement, and the little gathering 
broke up. Madame Lucille went to the 
great kitchen, where, with the help of a girl 
of fourteen, half-Indian, half-white, she be¬ 
gan the preparations for the morrow’s feast. 
The hunter departed for the woods in search 
of the promised fruit. The seignior looked 
up Jacques, and gave orders regarding the 
skinning and dressing of the three deer. 
Half an hour later, with the saddle of one 
of the bucks in the canoe, he was on his way 
up the river. 

Little was there in this frontier home to 
suggest that its master and mistress were 
rated among the nobility of the province of 
Canada. That little consisted of the mili¬ 
tary bearing of the seignior and a certain 
quiet dignity on the part of his wife, neither 
of which could be entirely concealed by 
their simple and plain attire. 

Nor was their lot an unusual one. Few 


56 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


among the gentry of Canada could boast of 
wealth. Most of them, indeed, might well 
have envied the Sieur Dupuy his comfort¬ 
able house, and his larder, well stocked with 
nourishing, if simple, food. 

Most of the seigniors, like Dupuy, had 
been officers in the French regiments that 
formed the backbone of the Canadian mili¬ 
tary organization. Belonging to the landless 
part of the French nobility, they had en¬ 
joyed no income beyond their salaries as of¬ 
ficers. Upon accepting the position of sei¬ 
gnior, they had, as a rule, been granted a few 
hundred livres, the equivalent of as many 
dollars in our money, and had then been left 
to their own resources, except for rules and 
regulations that hampered rather than 
helped them. 

With few tenants, with rents from these 
few fixed by government so low as to be 
valueless, the seigniors were, as a rule, de¬ 
pendent upon the labor of their own hands, 
and by inheritance and training those hands 
were poorly fitted for the hard toil of frontier 
life. So, struggling under adverse condi- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 57 


tions, cursed rather than blessed by enor¬ 
mous families, the seigniors, as a rule, had 
sunk into a condition of abject poverty that 
made them contemptible even in the eyes of 
their own tenants. Little indeed was left to 
them but debts, and an indomitable pride of 
birth and position that their poverty made 
into a hollow mockery. 

Two circumstances had combined to main¬ 
tain the Sieur Dupuy in a condition above 
that of most of his fellow seigniors. To¬ 
gether with his powerful and hardy phy¬ 
sique, he possessed a practical mind that 
could accommodate itself to any condition, 
military or economic. In addition to this, 
it had been his good fortune to receive, for 
gallantry in action, the lifelong privilege of 
participation in the fur trade, a privilege 
that, if not used in person, could always be 
assigned to one of the merchants of the 
colony, in return for a modest sum of money 
or a share of the profits. Thus was Dupuy 
enabled to lead a life of comfort, maintain¬ 
ing with simple dignity his position as feudal 
head of his little community. 


CHAPTER V, 






All at the seigniory were astir early the 
morning after the arrival of the messenger 
announcing the coming of Louis. In spite 
of yesterday’s activities, much remained to 
be done to provide a reception that, in 
Madame Lucille’s eyes, would be worthy of 
her nephew. So rooms must be carefully 
swept, the scanty furnishings of living-room 
and kitchen dusted or polished, as the case 
might be. Then, too, one of the second-floor 
chambers, usually set apart for the use of 
Father Gregory, the priest, must now be 
made ready for the young guest. Alto¬ 
gether, what with these matters and the 
preparation of the great dinner, which was 
to be served at sundown, Madame and her 
little half-breed helper bade fair to be in a 
state of nervous collapse by the time Louis 
should arrive. 

At noon, a birch-bark canoe, speeding 
rapidly down the river, brought the Sieur de 
La Ronde, with his wife and daughter Mar- 

58 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 59 


garet. Under the skilful guidance of the 
girl, who sat in the stern and wielded the 
one paddle, the light, graceful craft shot 
around the end of the wharf, swung in to¬ 
ward the shore, then, with its momentum 
checked by a backward sweep of the paddle, 
touched the gravel of the shore with barely 
a perceptible sound. 

De La Ronde stepped from the bow to the 
strand and, with a gesture that would have 
done credit to any young gallant at the court 
at Versailles, helped his wife from the canoe. 
Relieved of their weight, the light craft be¬ 
gan to drift with the current, but with one 
stroke of the paddle, Margaret sent it well 
up on the bank. Then, agile as a fawn, she 
leaped ashore beside her parents. 

These constituted an odd-looking pair. 
De La Ronde had once been a tall man, but 
worry and deprivation had bent, as well as 
shrunken, his once erect body. His thin face 
bore mustaches and a pointed beard, white 
like his hair. These, usually unkempt, had 
been trimmed and dressed for the occasion. 
Margaret had been the barber. 


60 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The attire of this French nobleman was as 
nondescript as one could have found in a 
beggars’ lane. The long, full-skirted coat 
was that of a lieutenant of the French army, 
of a quarter century earlier date. It was 
faded, threadbare, and moth-eaten. Among 
these less honorable marks, however, was a 
round hole, carefully darned with material 
raveled from inside seams. This, in the left 
lapel, showed where a Mohawk bullet had 
found its mark. De La Ronde still carried 
the lead in his shoulder. 

The waistcoat that had once formed part 
of the uniform had long since disappeared, 
as had the knee breeches; sacrifices to the 
pressing poverty of frontier life. The waist¬ 
coat had no substitute. Above the closely 
buttoned coat showed a rough, woolen, 
homespun shirt. The trousers of the uni¬ 
form had been replaced by garments of deer¬ 
skin, and the stockings by leggings of the 
same material. Moccasins took the place of 
shoes. 

That Madame de La Ronde was less 
oddly attired than her husband was due to 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 61 

the fact that her faded silk dress, part of her 
wedding attire, covered her entire person be¬ 
low the shoulders. Its ample folds, designed 
to accommodate enormous hoops, now fell 
straight from the hips, for the hoops them¬ 
selves were missing. Like her husband, she 
wore moccasins of deerskin. Her scanty 
white hair was uncovered, for she owned no 
hat, and she refused to wear the kerchief of 
a peasant woman. 

Margaret, a supple-bodied girl of sixteen, 
was dressed in a simple gown of homespun. 
Her round, brown arms were bare. Below 
the short skirt of her gown showed neat 
deerskin leggings and moccasins, the latter 
decorated with spines of hedgehog dyed in 
brilliant colors. A tumble of dark hair 
framed her olive-hued face. 

The Sieur Dupuy, attired in his old uni¬ 
form in honor of the occasion, greeted his 
guests at the landing. For De La Bonde 
there was a hearty hand-clasp, and for 
Madame, a courtly bow. Margaret was wel¬ 
comed with a bow not so formal. In addi¬ 
tion, the seignior took one of the girl’s 


62 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


shapely, brown hands in his and touched it 
to his lips: a tribute of maturity to the 
youthful beauty of which it never tires. 
Then, with Madame de La Ronde on his 
arm, Dupuy led the way through the field of 
barley to the house. 

Five minutes after the formal greetings 
were over, Margaret slipped away to the 
kitchen, and with deft, experienced hands 
kneaded, and stirred, and peeled, and sliced. 
Nor was she the only reinforcement that 
came to the aid of the mistress of the house. 
The sergeant, returning with a basket of 
delicious wild plums, insisted that he should 
be allowed to attend to the roasting of the 
two legs of venison that were to constitute 
the principal dish of the meal. 

This simple, but important operation was 
performed before the glowing coals in the 
great kitchen fireplace. A long, thin iron 
bar, sharp-pointed at one end, and bent 
into the form of a crank at the other, rested 
in notches in iron brackets that projected 
each side of the fireplace opening. The 
sergeant thrust this bar, or spit, lengthwise 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 63 


through each of the pieces of meat, and 
rested it on its brackets. This brought the 
meat close in front of the fire. Placing a 
long iron pan on the hearth to catch the drip 
from the roast, the sergeant seated himself 
on a low stool, and patiently began his task 
of “ turn-spit.” 

This was primitive cookery, and required 
constant attention, but, at the end of two 
hours, the venison had been roasted “to a 
turn ” of the spit, with a perfection unat¬ 
tainable with modern cooking devices, except 
with the spit which has, after long years of 
disuse, again come into favor. 

The conversation of the two in the living- 
room, and the activities of the four workers 
in the kitchen, were interrupted by the re¬ 
port of a musket-shot from down the river. 
The women rushed to the front of the house. 
The men followed more slowly, having taken 
time to arm themselves with the ever-ready 
guns. Their precautions were needless, 
however. Only a single canoe was in sight, 
a quarter of a mile below the wharf, and its 
occupants showed anything but a spirit of 


64 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


enmity. In the bow was a half-naked Indian 
warrior, in the act of repeating the salute 
that had first been heard. Another Indian, 
in the stern, wielded his ashen paddle with 
the grace born of lifelong experience. Amid¬ 
ships, seated on a huge bundle of his belong¬ 
ings, was Louis Dupuy, in the same attire 
in which we first saw him, waving his hand 
in greeting. 

It required but two or three minutes for 
the stalwart athletes who paddled the canoe 
to bring it to the landing. Greetings, em¬ 
braces, introductions followed. Louis looked 
with curious interest into the faces of his 
near relatives, now seen for the first time. In¬ 
terest was mixed with amusement, as, with 
courtly ceremony, the more distant relations, 
the Sieur de La Ronde and his family, were 
presented. Nobles in half-peasant dress 
were a novelty in the lad’s experience. Hav¬ 
ing been presented to all the company, in¬ 
cluding the sergeant, who, to the boy’s sur¬ 
prise, was treated by those nobles as an 
equal, Louis followed his hosts through the 
barley to the house. 



Waving his hand in greeting.— Page 64 , 













' 


.. • V* 

>* 























































4 



























ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 65 


As the August sun touched the tops of the 
trees on the west bank of the river, throwing 
light and welcome warmth into the great 
living-room, the call to dinner was given. 
It was a feast worthy of the occasion. 
Madame Lucille had bemoaned the lack of 
variety of the contents of her larder. She 
had failed, however, to mention her garden, 
which was in her own particular care, and 
was the delight of her heart. Squashes, 
peas, beans, above all half-ripe ears of corn, 
boiled and served hot with butter from her 
dairy; these, with the venison, made a meal 
such as Louis had never before eaten. 

“Auntie mine,” he said, “ if the king him¬ 
self were to come to Canada, he would be 
delighted with such a feast as you have given 
us.” 

Madame threw up her hands with a dep¬ 
recating gesture. 

“ It is nothing,” she said; “ only the poor, 
simple food of the frontier. If only I could 
have had the spices, and the sugar, and the 
fine flour of France-” 

“Yes, Aunt,” Louis broke in; “if you 



66 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


had had all those things you would have 
given me just the kind of food of which I 
grew tired in Paris. But who could grow 
tired of such venison as this, or of this de¬ 
licious corn, as you call it? If I could take 
some of this maize, just as you have served 
it, back to Franee when I go back, and could 
make a present of it to the king, I should be 
in high favor for the rest of my life/’ 

“ But you are not going back,” said his 
aunt warmly. “We will not let you go for 
a year, and after a year of Canada, no young 
man would wish to return to France.” 

“ It may be so,” replied Louis. “ Besides, 
if the English continue to blockade the Gulf 
as closely as they do now, I might not be 
able to return, even if I should wish to do so.” 

After this remark, Louis must, of course, 
tell the story of the chase and escape of the 
Superb . When the name of Captain Pirard 
was mentioned, the elder Dupuy gave an 
ejaculation of astonishment. 

“ Captain Pirard! ” He repeated the name 
after his nephew. “ Well we remember 
him, don’t we, Sergeant?” he said to the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 67 


hunter, who sat opposite him at the table. 
“As fine an officer and as true a gentleman 
as wears the king’s uniform, even though he 
has no noble blood in his veins. The sergeant 
and I went through a hard campaign on the 
lakes with him.” 

Louis listened to his uncle in astonish¬ 
ment. His ideas regarding social distinc¬ 
tions were receiving severe and unwelcome 
shocks. Nobles dressed like beggars; a re¬ 
tired sergeant, of lowly birth, accepted as 
an equal by a man of rank; the captain of 
the Superb, whom he had treated none too 
courteously, praised as a gentleman as well 
as an officer; all this was very disturbing to 
one brought up to think that the finer quali¬ 
ties of mind and heart were held as a monop¬ 
oly by those of gentle birth. 

To the keen eyes of his uncle, the boy’s 
open countenance revealed something of 
what was passing through his mind. 

“ Does it seem strange to you, Louis,” he 
asked, “ that I, whose lineage goes back to 
Charlemagne, should speak of Captain 
Pirard as a gentleman? I can understand 


68 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


your attitude, for I held it once myself. 
But, in America, the old idea of severe class 
distinctions came to seem out of place. 

“ In the first place, it was impossible to 
maintain the Old-World practice that the 
gentleman should do no manual labor. On 
the march through the forest, every one, 
from the commander down, must carry bur¬ 
dens according to his strength. In the canoe 
on lake or river, there can be no idle hands; 
officer and private, priest and peasant; all 
must use the paddle while afloat, and carry 
at the portages. In the smaller parties, 
there can be no distinction, even in camp. 
All eat the same food, share the warmth of 
the same fire, and the shelter of the same 
tent or wigwam. 

“As men, too, I have found little differ¬ 
ence in the forest between the son of the 
noble and the son of the peasant. Both are 
equally brave in danger, and resourceful in 
emergencies. They have the same virtues, 
and the same weaknesses. So, to me, they 
have become, not nobles and commoners, but 
simply Frenchmen.” 


CHAPTER VI 


On the morning after his arrival at the 
seigniory on the Richelieu, Louis woke at 
what seemed to him an early hour; for the 
August sun was just peeping over the woody 
border of the fields that surrounded the 
house. Going through the bundle of per¬ 
sonal belongings that he had brought with 
him, he selected a brown suit of heavy 
woolen. It was a costume that he had used 
when hunting on his brother’s estate in Brit¬ 
tany. With it, went coarse woolen stockings 
and heavy leather shoes. 

“ I must leave the other things up here in 
my room,” the lad said to himself as he un¬ 
packed a half-dozen suits, all as elaborate as 
the one he had worn on the previous day. 
“ People here apparently live very plainly, 
and such suits as these would seem altogether 
out of place. Perhaps I shall have a chance 
to wear them some time at Montreal or 
Quebec.” 


/ 


69 


70 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


If Louis thought that his hunting suit 
itself would be inconspicuous in comparison 
with the working clothes of his relatives, he 
was soon undeceived. Going out the front 
door of the house, he spied, at a little dis¬ 
tance, two forms, clad in peasant’s smocks, 
with their feet encased in enormous wooden 
shoes. Their feet, however, numbered only 
three, for one of the two persons was the 
seignior. The other was his friend, the 
sergeant. 

With perfect freedom of movement, his 
stride unrestricted by the handicap of a 
wooden leg, the elder Dupuy swung a keen- 
edged scythe in a field of ripe oats. The 
sergeant followed with a long-handled, 
wooden rake, with which he gathered the 
heavy grain into bundles. Then, with bands 
skilfully formed of the long straw, he bound 
these bundles almost as tightly and securely 
as is done by a modern harvesting machine. 

Skilful and energetic as the hunter was, 
however, he could not keep up with the 
seignior, as the latter moved steadily around 
the margin of the decreasing area of stand- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 71 


ing grain. Long, glistening swaths lay as 
yet untouched by the rake; an indication not 
only of the seignior’s skill, but of the early 
hour at which he had begun his day’s work. 

The elder Dupuy greeted his nephew with 
a cheery “ Good morning,” and stopped a 
moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. 
Then, after swallowing a great draught of 
water, using a hollowed-out, dried gourd as 
a cup, he resumed his steady march around 
the field. 

Louis stood alone. His mind struggled to 
adjust itself to its new surroundings. He 
had, of course, not expected to find America 
like his native France. He had known that, 
though nearly a century had elapsed since 
Champlain first planted the French flag at 
Quebec, Canada was still engaged in a bitter 
struggle for existence. But he had not been 
able to realize that, in this new country, a 
seigniory was but a farm, the value of which 
had small relation to the thousands of acres 
of wild, unsubdued forest of which it con¬ 
sisted. He had known that the life of the 
seigniors was far from being one of ease and 


72 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


luxury, but he had not expected to see one 
in whose veins was some of the best blood of 
France, attired like a peasant, and doing a 
peasant’s work. 

The boy’s mind turned to the surround¬ 
ing scene. How wild everything was: the 
half-reclaimed, unfenced fields; the rude 
house—half-dwelling, half-fort; the wilder¬ 
ness of trees, stretching, an unbroken mass 
of verdure, to all horizons, for even the river 
was but a ribbon of silver on the great gar¬ 
ment of green! And what were to be his 
experiences in this wilderness? Were they 
to be as different from the life he had here¬ 
tofore led as the wild Canadian forests were 
from the neatly walled fields and pastures 
of his native France? Time alone could 
tell. 

Louis’ meditations were interrupted by 
the sound of a bronze bell that swung from 
the top of a post, set in the back-yard of the 
house. It was the call to breakfast. 

“ Why the bell, Uncle? ” asked Louis, 
when all were seated and awaited the ap¬ 
pearance of the little part-Indian girl with 



ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 73 


the boiled corn-meal and fresh milk that 
constituted the breakfast. “ The fields are 
so small that a bell seems hardly necessary 
to send a call to any part of them.” 

“ It does seem so, doesn’t it? ” answered 
the uncle. “ But you see, only part of our 
work is done in the fields. Our winters are 
long and severe, and much wood must be 
cut to keep the fireplaces going during the 
cold months. In the early spring, too, we 
tap the hard maples, and make sugar and 
syrup from the sweet sap. By the way, 
Lucille, Louis hasn’t tasted your syrup yet. 
Let him have some with his corn-meal. I 
think he w 7 ill like it.” 

The maid soon appeared again with a 
pitcher filled with a thick, brown liquid— 
maple syrup. It was a delicacy even more 
prized in the frontier homes than it is to¬ 
day; for there it alone supplied the sweet 
that the human stomach craves. The sei¬ 
gnior’s prediction that it would appeal to his 
nephew’s taste was fully justified. No 
doubt the many weeks of sea-fare, followed 
by the scarcely more palatable food supplied 


74 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


on his journey from Quebec, had sharpened 
the boy’s sweet tooth. 

“Auntie mine,” he said half seriously, “ I 
don’t pretend to know very much about the 
Bible, but I once heard a priest read from it 
about something that was sweeter than 
honey and the honeycomb. Do you suppose 
the writer could have meant this that you 
call maple syrup? I think it the sweetest 
thing I have ever tasted, and the best.” 

There was a merry laugh at the boy’s ex¬ 
pense, in which he himself joined; for all 
hearts were light in this home of simple, un¬ 
pretentious comfort and abundance. 

“ Referring again to the bell,” said the 
seignior, after the merriment had subsided, 
“ my reason for sending all the way to 
France for it was a more serious one than 
simple convenience. You no doubt noticed, 
Louis, as you came up the river, half a dozen 
small farms along the eastern bank within 
two miles of us. There are as many more 
up-stream, and this house is their place of 
refuge in case of an Indian attack. Long, 
continuous ringing of the bell is the signal 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 75 


that such an attack is imminent. At this 
signal, all the tenants rush here for shelter 
and protection.” 

“You speak as if this had happened more 
than once,” said Louis, surprised at the 
matter-of-fact way in which his uncle spoke. 
“ Do such attacks often occur? ” 

Before replying, the seignior rose and led 
his nephew to the great fireplace. 

“ Count these nicks,” he said, pointing to 
a row of notches cut in the edge of the 
mantel. 

“ There are seventeen of them,” said 
Louis. 

“ We have been attacked that many 
times,” continued his uncle, as the two re¬ 
turned to the table. “ Five times the Mo¬ 
hawks tried to burn the house that I first 
built. At last they succeeded, and we had 
to take to the river. They tried hard to cut 
us off, but there were eight good men of us, 
and we held them back. We lost all we had, 
except our lives; and one very precious life 
was taken. Our only child, Charles, a curly- 
headed boy of five, was shot.” 


76 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The seignior paused a moment as the pic¬ 
ture of the tragedy flashed through his mind, 
then continued: 

“ There is no other place in all Canada as 
exposed to Indian attack as are the settle¬ 
ments along the Richelieu. Of all the Iro¬ 
quois tribes, no other hates the French so 
bitterly as does the Mohawk. It was them 
Champlain helped a Huron war-party to 
defeat, nearly a century ago, and the injury 
has never been forgiven. For over fifty 
years they have waged war upon us, with 
only brief and uncertain intervals of peace. 
Every Mohawk war-party comes down Lake 
Champlain and the Richelieu, whether its 
objective is Montreal, Three Rivers, or 
Quebec. So, for us, there is little peace. 

“ Realizing that, in all likelihood, these 
conditions would last as long as I should live, 
I determined that, upon rebuilding, I would 
make my house as safe a refuge as my means 
would allow. You see what it is. Twelve 
times the Mohawks have come. Three times 
they burned our grain between the harvest 
and the threshing. Twice they killed all our 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 77 


cattle, sheep, and hogs before we could get 
them to safety in the basement of the house. 
But never again have they been able to drive 
us from our home.” 

“ How have you fared at your home? ” 
asked Louis of the young Mademoiselle de 
La Ronde, who sat opposite him. “ Being so 
near, you must be exposed to the same dan¬ 
gers as my aunt and uncle.” 

“ Yes,” the girl answered. “ There is no 
difference, except that we haven’t a block¬ 
house like this. When there is an alarm, we 
take to the river or to the woods if we have 
time, and come here for protection. Six 
times within my memory our house has been 
burned down, and all we had destroyed, ex¬ 
cept what we could carry with us.” 

“Aren’t you frightened when an alarm 
comes?” asked Louis. The calmness with 
which these people discussed raids by sav¬ 
ages, sudden flights, and destruction of 
homes, amazed him. “ Why, in France,” he 
went on, “if a girl of your age should so 
much as meet one of the Indian warriors 
painted as I saw some of them in Montreal, 


78 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


she would promptly fall in a faint, and 
would be in bed for a week.” 

“ I can’t say that I ever enjoyed the ex¬ 
perience,” replied the girl. “ Of course, 
when we are warned in time, it is simply a 
matter of hurrying to the canoe and speed¬ 
ing down-stream as fast as we can go. But 
when a dozen of the savages pounced upon 
us without warning last year, I confess I was 
scared.” 

“ Her fright didn’t prevent her from do¬ 
ing a man’s task in helping her father hold 
off the savage crew until we could come to 
their aid,” said the elder Dupuy. “And 
when we arrived, the six Mohawks that were 
left were avoiding her side of the house as 
they would a pestilence.” 

“ You use a gun, then? ” asked Louis. 

Her father answered the question. 

“ Margaret was eight years old when she 
first fired my musket,” he said. “At ten, she 
bagged her first deer. A year later, she 
killed a bear that had climbed a tree in our 
front yard. I was not at home, but her 
mother told me what happened. Of course, 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 79 


she couldn’t hold the heavy gun for such a 
shot, but a high stump served her for a rest. 
The bear fell at the report of the gun, and 
never moved after he struck the ground. 
The bullet had gone through his brain.” 

“ Would you like to see my gun? ” asked 
Margaret. Like her father, she had come 
armed from her home. 

Without waiting for a reply, the girl ran 
up the stairs to the room she had occupied 
the night before. In a moment she had re¬ 
turned with her gun in her hand. The very 
manner in which she held the piece denoted 
her perfect familiarity with it. 

Louis, whose life on a country estate had 
accustomed him to firearms, recognized at a 
glance that the girl held one of the best that 
the skilled French gunsmiths could produce. 
It was a rifle, made somewhat shorter and 
lighter than an army musket, that it might 
not overtax the strength of its young owner. 
So perfect, however, was the distribution of 
its weight, and so fine the workmanship on 
barrel and stock, that a harder hitting, or 
more accurate rifle was not to be found in all 


80 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Canada. In addition, as became a gun 
meant for the use of a charming young girl, 
it was as beautiful as the artistry of France 
could make it. The metal work was, of 
course, dull finished—no shining metal could 
be allowed in the woods, to catch the eye of 
hidden foe or watchful game—but the stock, 
extending well toward the muzzle, was of 
San Domingo mahogany, rose-colored and 
dull-lustered. Inlaid in fine script in a 
golden-colored wood, in the side of the stock, 
was the name of the owner, MARGARET. 

“ It was a present to me from my brother, 
Vincent. He does not live at home now. 
He is in the fur trade.” 

Margaret spoke with some embarrass¬ 
ment, for like his three older brothers, and 
like scores of other sons of Canadian sei¬ 
gniors, Vincent de La Ronde, disgusted with 
the drudgery and poverty of existence on his 
father’s so-called estate, had quit it for a life 
which he considered more suited to his rank. 
He had become one of the coureurs de bois, 
that band of adventurers, brave but lawless, 
that traded, and fought, and explored for 



ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 81 


its own illicit profit, and, incidentally, for the 
glory of France. 

“ When he came home for a few days last 
winter,” Margaret continued, “ he brought 
me this for a birthday present. Would you 
like to try it? ” 

“ Yes, indeed,” replied Louis. “ But let 
me get the rifle I bought in Paris just before 
I started for Canada. We shall see which 
has the better gun, and which is the better 
shot.” 


CHAPTER VII 


The rifle that Louis brought down from 
his room was an excellent piece, a little 
longer and heavier than Margaret’s. Both 
were, of course, flint-locks, and muzzle- 
loaders ; the accepted style of the time. 

The mark selected was a black knot, two 
inches in diameter, on the whitened trunk of 
a dead old elm. The range was fifty paces. 
Louis was a good marksman, and placed the 
three bullets that he was to fire within three 
inches of the center of the knot. 

Margaret followed. She raised her gun 
somewhat slowly, and fired as the sights bore 
on the mark. The bullet cut the edge of the 
knot. 

“ Fine,” cried Louis, and the girl answered 
with a merry laugh of triumph, as she pro¬ 
ceeded to reload her gun. No less skill was 
shown in this process than had been exhibited 
in the firing. A quick motion brought her 
powder-horn to her lips. Extracting the 

82 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 83 


stopper with her teeth, she filled the charger 
attached to the horn, and emptied it into the 
still-smoking barrel of the gun. The round, 
leaden bullet followed, wrapped in a small 
patch of thin buckskin. This was forced 
down by the iron-shod ramrod. Before driv¬ 
ing the bullet home, however, the girl lifted 
the gun, threw it on its side, and hit the 
breech of the barrel a light blow with her 
hand. This shook a small quantity of pow¬ 
der from the barrel, through the vent, into 
the pan. This operation saved the time that 
otherwise would have been required for 
priming. The bullet was now pressed hard 
home. 

“No wonder your gun shoots well, with 
such loading,” exclaimed Louis. “ I try to 
get my lead rammed down hard, but I never 
heard of using a patch of leather to hold it.” 

“ Our woodsmen all use them,” the girl 
replied. “ They tell me it not only holds the 
bullet hard down on the powder, but it serves 
to prevent the fire, or smoke, or whatever it 
is that drives the bullet out, from leaking 
past it.” 


84 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


As Margaret finished speaking, she fired 
again, and again she hit the mark. This 
time it was a perfect bull’s-eye. 

“ Finer still,” shouted Louis after locat¬ 
ing the hit. “ You have me beaten already,” 
he continued as he returned to the side of 
the girl, who had her gun reloaded by the 
time he reached her. “ Now, your next shot 
will be for a prize. If you can place the 
third shot so that its hole joins that of the 
second, you win a horn of powder, and lead 
enough for a hundred bullets.” 

“ Do you mean it? ” asked the girl, her 
eyes glistening. “ I should like to win such 
a prize. Ammunition is so scarce here that 
I felt guilty in firing three times at a mark. 
But now,” she laughed a merry little laugh, 
“ well, I think you have lost your powder 
and lead already.” 

And so it proved. When Louis examined 
the stump for the trace of the bullet, he 
could fine none. 

“ Either you missed the stump altogether, 
or you put the bullet squarely on top of one 
of the others,” he called. 


ESCAPING TPIE MOHAWKS 85 


Margaret joined him, and examined the 
wood carefully. 

“ I know I didn’t miss the stump,” she 
said. “ I couldn’t do that at such a short 
distance. The bullet hit in one of the five 
holes that were already there. Ah! It did 
hit the right one. See, the hole in the middle 
of the knot is just a little longer up and 
down than it is sidewise. The third bullet is 
on top of the second one. You will see when 
we cut out the bullets.” 

“ But why cut them out? ” asked her com¬ 
panion. “ I don’t need proof that you have 
won. Now that you have pointed it out to 
me, I can see the mark of your third shot.” 

“ Oh, it isn’t that,” said Margaret. “ Of 
course, you would believe me. But we 
mustn’t waste the lead.” 

Lightly the girl ran off to the house. In a 
minute she was back, with a keen-edged axe 
in her hands. Refusing Louis’ offer to take 
it from her, she swung the tool around her 
head, and brought it down against the stump 
with a force that buried the edge more than 
an inch in the wood. A dozen strokes ex- 


86 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


tracted the battered spheres of the precious 
lead. 

“ You lose the three you fired, too, Mr. 
Wasteful,” Margaret cried, as she picked 
them up and put them in her pocket. “ That 
will teach you your first lesson in Canadian 
woodcraft: don't waste lead” 

“ Shall we put the guns up, now? ” asked 
Louis. The value of ammunition in this re¬ 
mote district began to impress itself upon 
him, and he did not care to suggest further 
target-shooting. 

“ Oh, I am rich, now that I have won your 
prize, and I will try one more shot if the 
chance comes. Your uncle is nearly through 
cutting that field of oats. Many times it 
happens that rabbits are caught in the stand¬ 
ing grain by the reapers. As the men work 
around and around the field, the rabbits re¬ 
treat toward the center. Then, when they 
see that their last shelter is about to disap¬ 
pear, they bolt for the woods. They make 
fine targets.” 

“ Do you mean that you could get them 
with a rifle?” asked Louis in astonishment. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 87 


“ I have hit hares as they ran, but always 
with a shotgun.” 

“A shotgun! ” exclaimed the girl. “ What 
is that? ” 

“ Don’t you have them here? ” asked 
Louis. “It is much the same as a smooth¬ 
bore musket, but lighter. And instead of 
one large ball, it shoots a spoonful of small 
lead.” 

“ Oh, yes! I remember now that Father 
told me he used that kind of a gun in 
France,” replied Margaret. “I shouldn’t 
like one. When you shoot at a rabbit with a 
rifle, you match your skill against his speed, 
and he has a fair chance to get away. But 
to shoot at him a charge of shot that scatters 
around like a handful of peas thrown against 
a wall,—that seems just like butchering 
him.” 

Louis laughed. 

“ You wouldn’t think it butchery if you 
had watched some sportsmen I have seen in 
France,” he said. “ If they got one hare in 
ten, they thought they were wonderful shots. 
Well, I have a double-barreled shotgun up 


88 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


in my room that is pretty good, but I won’t 
get it out now. I want to see you get a 
rabbit on the run with a rifle.” 

“ I didn’t say I would get him on the 
run,” replied the girl. “ I said he would 
make a good target. But your uncle is 
nearly through with this field. We must 
hurry if I am to get my chance at the rab¬ 
bit, if rabbit there is in the grain.” 

The little patch of oats still standing was 
about sixty yards from the forest that 
marked the northern limit of the fields. 
Margaret took her stand within twenty feet 
of where the sturdy seignior was to make his 
last cut. Steadily the swinging scythe 
mowed down the heavy grain; then, with a 
rustle of dry straws, a little brown-gray 
form rushed across the stubble toward the 
woods. 

When the rabbit was within a dozen yards 
of the bushes that lined the edge of the 
forest, Margaret whistled shrilly. In spite 
of the fears that possessed him, the little 
rodent stopped in his tracks, and sat up. In¬ 
stantly the sharp bark of the rifle rang out, 


ESCAPING TPIE MOHAWKS 89 


and the rabbit rolled over, shot through the 
head. 

“ You see it wasn’t necessary to shoot at 
him running,” said Margaret. 

“ I should like to have seen you try it, 
though,” replied Louis. “ I can’t believe 
you could do it once in a dozen times.” 

“ I certainly shall not try it a dozen times. 
It is bad enough to waste a whole charge on 
one little rabbit that could have been caught 
just as well in a trap. But if there is an¬ 
other one in what is left of the oats, I shall 
try another shot. I don’t say I will get him, 
for a running rabbit is harder to hit than a 
flying bird; he bobs up and down so, as he 
runs.” 

By this time the rifle was loaded again, 
and the seignior, who had entered heartily 
into the sport, resumed his work with the 
scythe. As he was beginning his last swing, 
two more rabbits broke simultaneously for 
the bushes. Terrified by the report of the 
rifle, they had remained in the grain, 
crouched to the earth, until the reaper was 
almost upon them. 


90 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Almost instantly Margaret’s rifle rang 
out, and one of the rodents toppled over. 

“Quick! Your rifle,” cried the girl. 
Thrusting her empty gun into Louis’ hands, 
she seized the weapon he held out to her. 

If the second rabbit was not breaking all 
forest records for speed, it was not for lack 
of earnest effort. With ears flat on his 
neck, he sped over the stubble with the enor¬ 
mous leaps of his kind. But, as he rose on 
his last leap, he crumpled into a furry ball. 

“ Bravo,” shouted Louis, swinging his hat 
around his head in excitement. “No won¬ 
der when the Iroquois attacked your house, 
they kept away from your side of it. Why, 
that last shot was for a full fifty yards. 
And to hit a rabbit running as that fellow 
was, and with a rifle-” 

Lacking words adequately to express his 
feelings, Louis ran and picked up the three 
dead rabbits. The second one killed, like the 
first, had been shot fairly through the head, 
the third one through the body. 

Margaret looked a little disappointed as 
she examined her third victim. 



ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 91 


“ Here in the woods, we don’t like to hit 
a small animal in the body,” she said. “ It 
spoils the meat. I didn’t think I would miss 
the head at that range. Now, may I try 
your gun at a still target? ” 

In reply, Louis reloaded his rifle, and 
handed it to her. Selecting a mark about 
fifty paces away, Margaret aimed with un¬ 
usual care, and fired. The bullet hit two 
inches directly below the mark. 

“Ah, now I feel better,” the girl said. 
“You have a good rifle, and it shoots true 
to the aim, but it is not so finely sighted as 
mine. I drew down to a fine sight on the 
rabbit, so, of course, the bullet went low.” 

“ Well,” said Louis, “ I see I have some¬ 
thing to learn about shooting a rifle. I 
had never thought of using one except for 
big game, and for that it doesn’t require 
much skill. To stand under cover, and shoot 
deer at close range as they are driven past 
your post; bah,—that, to me, is the real 
butchery. I never could stomach much of 
it, though it is considered a sport fit for 
kings.” 


92 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ What do you mean,—stand and let the 
deer be driven past you? ” exclaimed Mar¬ 
garet. “ I should like to see any one try to 
drive our Canadian deer.” 

“ Oh, those deer are only half wild,” re¬ 
plied Louis, “ and the beaters can herd them 
along like so many sheep. Killing them is 
poor sport.” 

44 We find plenty of use for all our skill 
here, when we go after deer,” said the girl. 
“ Of course, when we simply ambush a trail, 
and see the deer before they get our scent, it 
is easy. But when one comes unexpectedly 
upon a deer in the woods, it requires a quick 
eye and a true aim to bring him down before 
he disappears among the trees.” 

“ I hope you will learn the trick, Louis,” 
said the seignior, who had finished his task, 
and stood listening to the conversation of the 
young people. “ It may never matter par¬ 
ticularly whether or not you can hit a run¬ 
ning deer, but out here on the frontier we 
must always expect an Indian attack, and an 
Indian is usually almost as hard to hit as a 
bounding rabbit.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


“ Now that we have had our fun, let’s 
get these oats raked up and shocked,” said 
Margaret. She ran to the house and reap¬ 
peared with a rake in place of her rifle. She 
proved to be no less capable as a reaper than 
as a marksman. With long, quick strokes, 
she drew the heavy grain to her, then bound 
it into bundles with as much skill as the 
sergeant had shown. 

Louis looked on helplessly. Utterly igno¬ 
rant of the technique of the farm, he hesi¬ 
tated to offer his assistance in the work, and 
thus expose his awkwardness. On the other 
hand, he did not like to stand idle and watch 
a girl of his own rank work. Margaret, with 
quick intuition, read his thoughts, and her 
eyes twinkled. 

“ Come, Mr. Noble,” she said laughingly. 
“ Help me set up these bundles. Every¬ 
body works in Canada, you know, and this 
is your chance to begin to learn how.” 

93 


94 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


With a sense of real relief, Louis accepted 
the invitation. Following Margaret’s in¬ 
structions, he picked up two of the bundles 
of grain, and set them firmly on their butts 
on the ground. The girl set up two more. 
All four were so placed that the butts were 
slightly apart, while the tops were in con¬ 
tact. In this way each bundle braced the 
others and prevented the whole pile from 
collapsing. A half dozen more bundles were 
placed around the first four. 

“ Now for the cap-sheaves,” cried the girl. 
Picking up a large, well-made bundle, she 
spread its top into the form of a wide fan, 
and put it on top of the shock. Another 
similar cap-sheaf was placed on top of the 
first. The two completely covered the heads 
of the standing bundles. 

“ That will shed the rain, you see,” said 
Margaret, as the operation was completed. 
“ The whole shock will keep dry and sweet 
until it can be hauled to the threshing floor.” 

After assisting in setting up a dozen 
shocks, Louis was told by his fair instructor 
to try to make one alone. After one or two 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 95 

failures, he succeeded in creating a fairly 
good shock. Thanks to brains and the ready 
adaptability of youth, in the course of half 
an hour he became almost as skilful as the 
girl herself. 

“ Now, I call that pretty good,” Louis 
said with real enthusiasm, stepping back to 
survey a particularly good piece of work. 
“ But what do you suppose my old chums 
in France would say to see me harvesting 
like a peasant? ” 

The words were no sooner out of his 
mouth than Louis would have given much to 
recall them. His companion’s erect figure 
stiffened, and a crimson flush spread over 
her brown face. She glanced at her simple 
homespun flock, and her brown arms, now 
reddened by the coarse straw she had been 
handling. 

“ They would probably not laugh any 
harder at your doing a peasant’s work, than 
at your associating with a peasant girl,” she 
said, a little bitterly. 

Louis dropped the two sheaves he held in 
his arms. Going up to Margaret, he took 


96 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


her hand as he said earnestly: “ I didn’t 
mean to hurt you, and I didn’t mean that 
there is any disgrace in doing this kind of 
work. I think I am a good deal of a 
Canadian already, for I confess I am rather 
proud to be able to do it.” 

The boy’s frankness cured the hurt. 

“ I think we shall make you altogether a 
Canadian soon,” she said. “ But you see, 
we work here, not so much because we like 
to do it, but because we would rather work 
than go hungry. It would be fine if we had 
a hundred tenants on our estate, and all of 
them were required to till our fields, as is 
done in France. But with only three ten¬ 
ants, and an income from the whole of them 
of only six chickens and a bushel of corn 
each year, with no labor furnished,—well, I 
have been hungry for a week at a time, and 
I don’t like the feeling; I had rather help 
in the fields, and have at least a cake of 
corn-bread each day.” 

“Are you and your parents alone? ” asked 
Louis. 

“ Yes,” replied Margaret. 


“ One at a 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 97 


time my four brothers have all gone to the 
woods, and one at a time word has come of 
the death of the first three, in fights with the 
Indians, or through drowning in the treach¬ 
erous streams. Vincent alone is left, and he 
rarely visits us.” 

“ And the work? ” the lad asked with some 
hesitation, as he wished to avoid hurting the 
girl again. 

“Father does what he can,” Margaret 
answered. “ Perhaps he does more than he 
should, for he says his heart is very weak. 
Mother is busy in the house, so a good part 
of the work in the field comes to me.” 

A sense of loyalty to her home caused the 
girl to tell but half the truth. As a matter 
of fact, her father, in spite of a slight weak¬ 
ness of the kind mentioned by his daughter, 
found himself well able to tramp for miles 
in the woods on hunting trips, and his wife 
was usually as able-bodied as he. Neither, 
however, had ever lost the pride of birth, and 
of their former associations. The mother 
had declared frankly, when first brought to 
her wilderness home, that she would starve 


98 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


before she would labor like a peasant woman. 
Nothing had ever moved her from this posi¬ 
tion; cold, hunger, the loss of all in the In¬ 
dian attacks: these had left her resolution 
unchanged. She would spin and weave, and, 
if need be, prepare the simple meals of the 
household. Beyond that, she would do noth¬ 
ing. 

“ What crops have you this year? ” asked 
Louis. He was already beginning to talk 
like a farmer. 

“ Oh, this year we are fortunate,” an¬ 
swered Margaret. “ That good man, your 
uncle, drove his team of oxen all the way to 
our farm, to do our plowing, so now we have 
nearly ten acres of grain: corn, barley, and 
wheat.” 

“ That was a long walk for a man with a 
wooden leg,” said Louis. “ I don’t see how 
he could do it. I believe I heard that it is 
nearly ten miles.” 

“ Oh, he didn’t walk,” the girl answered 
with a laugh. “ He rode one of the oxen. I 
think you would have laughed, too, to see 
him. But no captive lady of the story-books 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 99 


was ever gladder to see her knight as he 
came to the rescue, than was I to see your 
uncle on old Star, as he called the ox.” 

“Age has had its turn, and youth will be 
served,” cried Louis. “ My uncle helped 
with the planting. I claim the right to a 
part in the harvesting. I will get the sei¬ 
gnior to show me how to use that wicked¬ 
looking implement he calls a scythe. I am 
pretty good with a sword; perhaps that will 
help me with the other weapon. Then, if I 
may, I will go over to your house and show 
you my skill.” 

For such a brief instant that it escaped 
Louis’ notice, Margaret hesitated to accept 
the offer. It was not that she did not want 
him to come. Her young nature, cramped 
and starved for lack of comradeship, craved 
the opportunity of associating with one of 
her own age. The thought that had flashed 
through her mind was of the conditions 
Louis would find in her home: the utter 
poverty, which made the proud name of the 
family seem a hollow mockery. Quick as the 
thought itself, however, came the realization 


100 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

that Louis must know sometime of these 
conditions, and that the sooner he knew, the 
sooner the hurt to her pride would be over. 

“ I should like to have you come,” she said. 
She smiled as she spoke, but the smile was a 
little forced. “ Father and Mother will be 
glad to welcome you.” 

“ Fine,” said Louis. “ I heard your father 
say you three are to go home this afternoon. 
This is Saturday. Next Wednesday I shall 
come.” 

As no priest was regularly stationed at the 
seignories on the Richelieu, no religious 
services were held on the following day. To 
pass the idle hours, Louis told his relatives, 
eager for news from France, of experiences 
at home and at Paris, even at the king’s 
court itself, where the lad had once appeared. 

“ Ah, you spoke to his Majesty, then!” 
exclaimed the good woman as Louis told this 
part of his story. “ How short a time it 
seems since we were presented to him, 
Georges,” she said to her husband. “ It was 
just before we left France for Canada,” she 
went on, addressing her nephew. “ The 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 101 


king gave a reception to the officers of the 
regiment Carignan on the eve of their de¬ 
parture. Of course, their wives were there, 
too. His Majesty seemed to think we 
women were doing a wonderful thing to ac¬ 
company our husbands to what he called the 
wilds of America. I remember how like a 
king he was, in looks and in manner. He 
said some things to some of us about our 
looking nice, too,” the little old lady said 
archly. “ Well, Georges,” she continued, 
with just a suspicion of a sigh, “ if he saw 
us now in our buckskin and homespun, in¬ 
stead of in silks and velvets, I am afraid he 
would have no compliments for us.” 

“ Perhaps not,” answered her husband; 
“ still, I am told that nothing the king has 
ever undertaken lies nearer his heart than 
his province of Canada. And if he were to 
come here and find us faithfully doing our 
little part in furthering his plans for estab¬ 
lishing a New France in the wilderness, he 
might generously say, as did the nobleman 
in the story of old, ‘ Well done, good and 
faithful servant.’ ” 


102 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ I haven’t the slightest doubt he would,” 
said Louis. “ In fact, I may say he has done 
so already. My presentation at court oc¬ 
curred after I received your invitation to 
come to Canada. I was presented by the 
Minister of Marine, who, as you know, is in 
charge of Canadian affairs. He told his 
Majesty that I was about to visit the Sei¬ 
gnior Dupuy, whose home was on the Riche¬ 
lieu. 

“ ‘ Dupuy,—Dupuy, I don’t seem to re¬ 
member the name,’ the king said. ‘ I 
thought I had seen the names of all the 
seigniors in Canada on the lists of those 
asking for annuities, or pensions, or other 
favors. But I don’t remember seeing the 
name Dupuy there.’ 

4 4 ‘ For the simple reason that it was not 
there, your Majesty,’ replied the Minister, 
who seemed to have a surprising knowledge 
of the affairs of the province. ‘ Dupuy, 
without requesting it, was granted the right 
to trade in furs, when he lost a leg in action. 
His name has never appeared on a petition 
asking for aid.’ 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 103 


“ ‘ I wish I had a thousand such seigniors 
in Canada,’ said the king. Then he turned 
to me. ‘ Young man,’ he said, ‘ I under¬ 
stand you are about to visit this Sieur 
Dupuy, your uncle. Take to him and to 
Madame Dupuy the commendation of their 
old king for service faithfully performed. 
And for yourself, if you care to serve me, 
remember that you can do it in no better 
way than by simply following your uncle’s 
example.’ ” 

For several minutes the three sat in silence, 
for the old people were deeply touched by 
the thought that the king, loyalty to whom 
was almost like a religion to them, had taken 
notice of their simple, but faithful, lives. 
Finally Madame Lucille rose, and going to 
her husband’s side, she lifted one of his large, 
calloused hands and held it between her two 
brown, withered ones. 

“ I think you were right, Georges,” she. 
said, and her eyes shone with happy tears. 
“ If he were here, he would forget about the 
homespun and the wooden shoes, and remem¬ 
ber only the long years of faithful service.” 


CHAPTER IX 


On Monday morning Louis made known 
to his uncle his desire to learn the use of a 
scythe. 

“ Why, you are not intending to become 
a farmer, are you? ” asked the seignior in 
some surprise. 

“ No,” replied Louis. “ I don’t know yet 
what I shall do when I am older. But it 
seems to me it will do no harm to learn 
something about farming. Besides, I expect 
to help Margaret de La Ronde with her har¬ 
vesting in a few days, so I should like to 
learn more about that kind of work in ad¬ 
vance.” 

The seignior looked at Louis apprecia¬ 
tively. “ I am glad you are going to help 
her,” he said. “ That girl is a jewel, if the 
good Lord ever made one; hut I can’t say as 
much for any of the rest of them, even 
though they are my cousins. But then, they 
are no worse than scores of other French of 

104 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 105 


good family who are stranded here in Can¬ 
ada. Too proud to work and too poor to live 
without working, their only thought seems 
to be to beg a living from the governor, and, 
through him, from the king. It would he 
far better for the province if they could all 
he shipped back to France in return for half 
as many good, sturdy peasants.” 

His uncle now showed Louis how to swing 
the scythe; then after a few moments of 
practice, how to sharpen the long, curved 
blade with a whetstone. The boy was soon 
able to do both these tasks with some pro¬ 
ficiency. 

“ All right, now,” said his uncle. “ You 
may start in on this field of barley. Watch 
out for hidden stumps, and keep the blade 
away from your feet, and you’ll do. The 
sergeant will bind up after you, while I 
rake.” 

With a sense of real pleasure, the boy 
began his task. In fine condition as he was, 
the work, at first, seemed light. After fif¬ 
teen minutes, however, his muscles, unac¬ 
customed to real toil, began to feel the 


106 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


strain, while the perspiration rolled from his 
brow in great beads. At the end of half an 
hour, it seemed as if he simply must stop for 
rest. The August sun, hot in a cloudless 
sky, beat upon his head, and it seemed as if 
his aching arms could hardly swing the 
heavy scythe another stroke. But his uncle, 
old man that he was, had, while harvesting 
the oats in the previous week, made his 
steady rounds hour after hour, only stop¬ 
ping for an occasional drink of cold water. 

“ I won’t stop until he asks me to,” said 
the weary lad to himself, and he started his 
third round of the little field. At the end of 

4 

this round, his uncle came up to him. 

“ You had best not do any more now,” he 
said, as he noted the boy’s hot, flushed face, 
and his lagging stroke. “ Too long a trick 
at first makes sore muscles and blistered 
hands. You swim, don’t you?” he con¬ 
tinued, with apparent irrelevance. 

“ Yes, indeed,” answered the boy. 

“ Well,” his uncle went on, “ I suggest 
that you go over into the shade of those 
woods.” He pointed to the forest that edged 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 107 


the fields. “ Cool off for a while, then take 
a dip in the water.” 

Soon Louis was in the woods, and almost 
as soon in the stream. His uncle’s advice to 
cool off in the shade was, of course, disre¬ 
garded. For half an hour, he sported like a 
fish in the luxurious coolness of the water. 
Then, quickly dressing, he went back to the 
field and offered to take the scythe again. 
But his uncle would not allow it. 

“ A little at a time,” he said. “ A half- 
hour this afternoon and a little more to¬ 
morrow, and you will be ready to attack 
Margaret’s wheat.” 

Early on Wednesday, Louis, armed with 
his rifle, started for the home of the Sei¬ 
gnior de La Ronde. He had not, as yet, 
mastered the art of handling a canoe, so the 
river route was not available to him. How¬ 
ever, as the trail that connected the homes 
of the settlers along the Richelieu followed 
the course of the river, there was no danger 
that he would lose his way. 

For nearly three hours the hoy walked 
leisurely, usually in the trail. At times he 


108 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


lost the path, but always by keeping near the 
bank of the river, he regained it. It was an 
experience new in his life. The forests to 
which he had been accustomed in France 
consisted of little areas covered with half- 
grown trees, all under the care and over¬ 
sight of the foresters. So precious was fuel 
in that country that scarcely a dead twig 
was allowed to go to waste. Here nature 
alone ruled. Great oaks and elms, more 
sturdy than their neighbors, spread their 
canopies of leaves over immense areas, and 
used their monopoly of sunshine to achieve 
even greater strength and size. In the shade 
of these mighty monarchs, younger and 
weaker trees died, or eked out a scanty sub¬ 
sistence. Like heirs apparent, they waited 
in the shadow for the fall of their lords. 
And, like other monarchs, the kings of the 
forest, in time, fell. As Louis followed the 
winding trail, he saw their corpses. Some, 
newly dead, lay stark on the black earth. 
Over others, longer fallen, a kindly nature 
had thrown a mantle of mossy green, be¬ 
neath which their dust was gradually being 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 109 

returned to the dust from whence it had 
sprung. 

At length the light shone through the 
trees ahead, and Louis found himself at the 
edge of a clearing. It extended for perhaps 
a quarter of a mile back from the river, and 
was somewhat less in width. Near the river 
bank was a substantial log house of two 
stories, with two or three small outbuildings. 

A sturdily-built man, in smock and 
wooden shoes, harvested a field of barley. 
He did not lack for assistance. Two boys, 
and as many girls, raked and bound the 
heavy grain. When these helpers caught 
sight of the stranger, a shout went up, and 
the house and outbuildings poured out the 
rest of the family. It was like the letting 
out of a country school. Not less than ten 
children trooped, or were carried, across the 
fresh-cut stubble. At the head of the band 
was the mother, a young woman of thirty- 
five. 

The husband and father of this typical 
Canadian family stopped his work, and, 


110 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


leaning on the snathe of his scythe, awaited 
Louis’ approach. He returned the lad’s 
greeting. 

“ I take it you are the nephew of the Sieur 
Dupuy,” he said. “ I had heard that your 
uncle expected you soon. I am glad to meet 
you.” 

Louis took the man’s extended hand. He 
was surprised, however, and it must be con¬ 
fessed, a little nettled, at the man’s manner. 
Not a trace was there of the obsequiousness 
of the peasant toward one of high rank, to 
which Louis was accustomed. There was 
nothing disrespectful in the man’s attitude; 
he simply acted as if he had met another 
fellow-creature who was neither better nor 
worse than he himself, which was the case. 

“ Yes, I am Louis Dupuy,” replied the 
lad. “And your name,”—his tongue had 
almost phrased the usual addition—“ my 
good man,” but somehow such an expres¬ 
sion, with its implication of inferiority on 
the part of the person addressed, did not 
seem to fit itself to this sturdy, independent 
farmer. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 111 


“ I am Baptiste Perrot,” he replied. 

“ Are you a tenant of my uncle’s? ” Louis 
asked. 

“ No,” Baptiste replied. “ If this land 
has any owner besides myself, it is the Sieur 
de La Ronde. His home is in the next clear¬ 
ing up the river, about a mile from here.” 

“ That is where I am going,” said Louis. 
“ I suppose the trail is along the river, as it 
has been so far.” 

“ Yes,” said the farmer. “ You can’t miss 
it. And if you should scare up a deer on 
the way,” he called as Louis moved away, 
“ you had best shoot it, and carry it along 
with you, unless you don’t care if you go 
hungry.” 

Louis made no reply to this gibe, but it 
continued running through his thoughts for 
the rest of his journey. The world seemed 
topsy-turvy. In France, it had not been 
unusual for him to see peasants whose faces 
showed signs of deprivation and hunger, hut 
their lords never lacked for the necessities or 
comforts of life. But here, a tenant, with a 
brood of a dozen or more fat, healthy chil- 


112 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


dren, made sport of the poverty of his feudal 
chief. 

After the remark of Baptiste Perrot, 
Louis did not expect to find in the home¬ 
stead of De La Ronde much that would sug¬ 
gest a manorial estate. Nevertheless, what 
he actually saw came as a shock to him. At 
some time in the past, probably when he had 
the assistance of his sons, De La Ronde had 
made a clearing that covered some thirty 
acres. All attempts to cultivate so large a 
field, however, had long since been aban¬ 
doned, and more than half the area was fast 
being reclaimed as a forest by jealous 
Mother Nature. A third of the tract was 
under rude cultivation. 

The house that stood in the midst of the 
ripening grain was little better than a hovel. 
Apparently discouraged by the repeated de¬ 
struction of his home by the Indians, De La 
Ronde had built the rudest kind of a log 
cabin. Of one room, with a dirt floor and a 
thatched roof of oat-straw, the cracks be¬ 
tween the logs filled with clay, it represented 
the minimum protection with which a white 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 113 


family could live in the severe climate of the 
St. Lawrence basin. 

As Louis found his way along a winding 
path that led through the grain to the house, 
the girlish figure of Margaret appeared at 
the cabin door. Louis greeted her at a dis¬ 
tance with raised hat and a bow, which was 
answered by the girl with a wave of the 
hand. Her parents then joined her, and the 
three united in welcoming their young guest. 

The furnishings of the cabin were as rude 
as the structure itself. A fireplace of sticks 
plastered with mud at one end, a low shelf 
made of hewn planks that served as a table, 
three stools, and as many pallets of sticks 
built against the wall,—this was all. Not 
even the usual spinning wheel and loom were 
here. Destroyed with the latest predecessor 
of the cabin, poverty had prevented their 
replacement. 

Margaret placed one of the stools for the 
guest. Mixed emotions brought a flush to 
her face that heightened her natural beauty. 
For many, many months the dread mo¬ 
notony of her life had been unbroken, save 


114 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


for the rare visits of Father Gregory, the 
priest. Day after day she had toiled in the 
fields or in the house, her sole companions 
two querulous old people whose only mental 
occupation was the finding of new causes of 
complaint against their unhappy lot. Now, 
within the week, she had had the joy of the 
days spent in the quiet refinement and cheer¬ 
ful atmosphere of the Dupuy home, and the 
perhaps greater joy of finding there so con¬ 
genial a spirit as Louis. And now he was 
her guest. 

The poverty of her home pained her, and 
was perhaps mostly responsible for the flush 
on her face. But Margaret was a sensible 
girl. Without reasoning the thing out, she 
felt that even in this abject poverty, there 
was nothing of which she herself need be 
ashamed. She had stood loyally by her 
parents, while her brothers had deserted 
them. Thanks to her efforts, a harvest was 
about to be gathered that would provide at 
least bread for the coming year. She could 
say to herself that she had done what she 
could. 


CHAPTER X 


The formality of greetings over, Louis 
proposed that he and Margaret get to work 
at once on the field of barley, which was 
already overripe. 

“ But surely we cannot allow one brought 
up as has been the young Sieur Dupuy, and 
who is our guest, to work in the fields like a 
peasant. It is unthinkable.” 

It was Madame de La Ronde who spoke. 
Louis turned to her in some surprise. 

“ I had understood that your daughter 
expected to harvest the grain alone, 
madam,” he said. 

“ Oh, but that is different,” replied the 
woman. “ Margaret was brought up in 
Canada. She has never known anything but 
the fields and the woods. But you, Mon¬ 
sieur; you have lived, as had I until I was 
older than you, in beautiful France, and in 
surroundings of refinement. I have never 
been able to bring myself to do such labor, 

115 


116 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


and we must not allow our distinguished 
guest to do so.” 

Louis had no great liking for such labor 

himself, but the attitude of this woman was 

% 

even less to his mind. His answer was cour¬ 
teous, but it was brief, and very much to 
the point. 

“ I had never supposed, madam,” he said, 
“ that the blood of a De La Ronde was any 
less noble than that of a Dupuy; and I have 
always held that it was the duty of a gentle¬ 
man to carry the burden, if one must be 
borne, rather than to shift it to a woman.” 

The face of the Sieur de La Ronde flushed. 

“ Those are the words of a real gentle¬ 
man,” he said, and his voice had in it the 
whine of a beggar who praises one from 
whom he hopes to receive alms. “ It cuts 
me to the heart to see my Margaret, my 
only daughter, laboring early and late at 
work so unfitted to her gentle birth. How 
tragic it is that I, who would gladly work 
like an African slave to spare her, must sit 
in idleness while she toils. It is my heart. 
A single hour in the fields endangers my 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 117 


very life. And if I should go, who then 
would care for my dear wife and child? ” 

Louis could scarcely conceal his disgust at 
the words and the manner of this nobleman 
of France. From remarks dropped by his 
aunt, he had a pretty accurate understand¬ 
ing of the character of Margaret’s parents. 
What he now heard confirmed the impres¬ 
sions he had received. Not trusting himself 
to answer his host, lest his disgust show itself 
in his words, he turned to Margaret. 

“ If you will get your scythe,” he said, 
“ we will get to work.” 

The girl turned to him with a dismayed 
look. 

“ I haven’t any scythe,” she said. “ I am 
sorry. I had expected to borrow one from 
Baptiste Perrot. He had two; but yester¬ 
day he broke one of them by hitting a hidden 
stump. So I have only a sickle. And it is 
so slow and tiresome bending over all day 
to use a sickle.” 

Never having learned by experience the 
truth of Margaret’s remark, Louis answered 
lightly that he didn’t think it mattered much, 


118 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


for if the sickle was slower, it was also 
lighter to handle. 

Two hours later, when the call to dinner 

came, Louis had changed his mind regarding 

the relative merits of the two tools. His 

• 

right hand was blistered from gripping the 
handle, his arm was lame, and his back,— 
well, it took him at least two minutes to 
straighten up after he had quit work. He 
knew, too, that if he spent the afternoon 
with the sickle, he would be so lame next day 
that he would hardly be able to work at all. 
And, as a result of his two hours of toil, not 
over a quarter of an acre of grain had been 
cut. 

“ This won’t do at all, Margaret,” he said. 
“At this rate, it will take us a month to get 
through with your harvest. And my back 
feels as if it never would get straight again. 
My uncle has three scythes. I saw them 
hanging in his shed. And his rakes are 
much lighter than yours. Let’s put off our 
harvesting until to-morrow. This afternoon 
we will go to my uncle’s in the canoe, and 
to-morrow, bright and early, we will come 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 119 


back with some good tools. We will make 
up in half a day for the time lost.” 

The prediction of the farmer Perrot that 
Louis would suffer for lack of food in the 
cabin of De La Ronde was not fulfilled. As 
before intimated, the seignior’s heart 
trouble, though so serious when work in the 
fields was concerned, did not interfere at all 
with the hardly less severe toil of the hunt. 
In fact, the gentleman had been known to 
follow a wounded deer on the full run for 
half a league, without suffering any ap¬ 
parent harm. The excitement of the chase, 
no doubt, furnished the stimulant necessary 
to cause the weak organ in his chest to 
function temporarily in a perfectly normal 
manner. 

In this instance, Margaret had suggested 
that a good deer would be most acceptable 
in replenishing an almost empty larder. 
Her father had accepted the suggestion of a 
hunt with alacrity. Helping himself liber¬ 
ally to the powder and lead that Louis had 
given Margaret, for his own supply was 
nearly exhausted, he started out early on the 


120 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


day before the expected arrival of the guest. 
With the skill of long experience added to a 
keen relish for the sport, he had soon bagged 
a fine buck and a doe. By two o’clock, he 
was back at his own landing with the two 
carcasses in his canoe. Shortly after, Mar¬ 
garet had the meat of the doe drying in the 
sun, for future use, while the buck was being 
cut up preparatory to meals for hungry 
reapers. 

“ Do you paddle a canoe? ” asked Marga¬ 
ret as the two walked down to the landing, 
half an hour after a really delicious dinner 
of roast venison had ended. 

“ No,” said Louis. “ I never was in one 
until I made the trip from Montreal here. 
And, of course, I could not delay the two 
Indians that brought me by having them 
teach me how to use a paddle. Besides,” he 
added laughingly, “ the little craft seemed 
so frail and unsteady when compared with 
the boats I had been accustomed to in 
France, that I was well satisfied to sit just 
as still as I could, right in the middle of the 

99 


canoe. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 121 


Margaret’s musical laugh answered that 
of the lad. 

“You have probably got over your fear 
of tipping over by this time,” she said, “ for 
you must have come through some rough 
water, unless the St. Lawrence was quieter 
than it usually is.” 

“ Oh, it was rough enough,” Louis re¬ 
plied. “ A stiff breeze came up the river as 
we paddled from Montreal to the Richelieu, 
and as the tide and current both ran in the 
opposite direction, it kicked up a nasty, 
choppy sea. But I found this didn’t trouble 
the canoe at all. It was so light, it simply 
danced over the tops of the waves. And 
can’t those Indians use their paddles? ” 

“ I never saw an Indian that wasn’t an 
expert with a canoe,” Margaret answered, 
“ especially those that live along the St. 
Lawrence, and have canoes of birch-bark. 
Sometimes the Mohawks use heavier canoes 
made of elm-bark. Of course, these are 
more clumsy, but that isn’t the fault of the 
paddlers. All Indians are skilful with a 
canoe,” the girl went on, “ but when it comes 


122 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


to shooting a difficult rapid, I had rather 
trust myself to the paddle of your uncle’s 
friend, the sergeant, than to that of any 
Indian I ever saw.” 

“ Is he so wonderful? ” asked Louis. 
“ He is so quiet about the house and at his 
work, that I had scarcely paid any attention 
to him.” 

“ Your uncle says there is not a man be¬ 
tween here and the great prairies that they 
say lie far beyond our five great lakes, who 
is better with a rifle, a paddle, or as a guide 
and scout in the woods, than the sergeant.” 

“ My uncle said ‘ a man,’ ” answered 
Louis. “ If the sergeant can drop a bounc¬ 
ing rabbit any more neatly with a rifle than 
you did, he must be a wonder.” 

The girl concealed her appreciation of the 
compliment with a little laugh. 

“ I was lucky that day,” she said. “ I 
don’t always get them when they are run¬ 
ning. But about canoeing. If you will 
kneel in the bow after I shove off, I will give 
you your first lesson.” 

Louis was clumsy enough with his paddle 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 123 


when he first attempted to use it, but he soon 
overcame his awkwardness sufficiently to be 
of some use in driving the boat forward. 
After a mile of this, Margaret suggested 
that the two change places. This gave 
Louis the task of steering as well as propel¬ 
ling the light craft. Light as a bubble, sup¬ 
ported almost entirely by the broad middle 
portion of its length, the lad found it almost 
as difficult to keep it to anything near a 
straight course as if it had been a wash-tub. 
Margaret, however, showed him how to neu¬ 
tralize the turning effect of his stroke by a 
twist of the blade in the water. Then the 
zigzags began to straighten out, and, before 
long, the canoe was speeding swiftly down 
the stream. 

“ There, I think that was pretty good, 
don’t you? ” asked Louis, when a run of a 
mile between two bends of the river had 
been made with scarcely a crook in the 
course. The boy had checked his steering by 
keeping his companion’s head in line with a 
lofty elm on the farther bank beyond the 
bend ahead. 


124 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ It was much better,” replied the girl a 
little quizzically. “You splashed with your 
paddle only six times in the mile.” 

“ Did I splash? ” replied Louis. “ I 
didn’t notice it. I didn’t splash you, did I? ” 
Margaret laughed again. 

“You couldn’t hurt this old homespun 
frock with a little water,” she said. “ When 
you attended the great balls in Paris, and 
danced with the fine ladies, did they clatter 
their heels on the polished floors? ” 

“ Of course not,” replied Louis, surprised 
at the question. “ A well-bred young 
woman makes no noise as she moves. That 
would not have been good form.” 

“ That is just the expression I wanted,” 
said Margaret. “ A well-trained woodsman 
makes no noise as he moves. In the forest, 
the snapping of a dead stick may reveal 
one’s presence; in a canoe, a single splash of 
the paddle may do the same. The result 
may be hunger from failure in the hunt, or 
death at the hands of a lurking foe. It isn’t 
good form to make a noise in the woods.” 

“ Whew, what a lot I have to learn,” said 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 125 


Louis; “to swing a scythe instead of a 
sword, to shoot flying game with a rifle in 
place of my old shotgun, to paddle a feather¬ 
weight canoe instead of rowing a boat, to 
keep still as a mouse in the forest when there 
is no one within ten miles to hear you. Why, 
that is the very time when I should like to 
kick up my heels and yell. Say, Margaret, 
haven’t you ever stood on the bank of the 
river, and shouted so as to hear the echoes on 
the other side of the valley? ” 

“ Yes, I have done it at home,” Margaret 
replied. “ It didn’t make any difference 
there if a Mohawk did hear. He would 
know where we were, anyway. But I knew 
a boy who tried it on a hunting trip once. 
He didn’t come back.” 

“ How am I to learn all these things 
people out here know? ” said the boy. “ It 
seems I must go to school all over again, and 
I thought I was through.” 

“ Some things, I can teach you,” Margaret 
answered. “ Your uncle says I know more 
about the woods than most men. It may be 
I do, for I have always loved them, and the 


126 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


beasts and the birds that live in them. But, 
of course, we can’t go off on long hunting 
trips together, and that is the way really to 
learn woodcraft. I think the best thing 
would be for you to get the sergeant to take 
you with him on one of his trips. He always 
goes up the river in the fall, when the deer 
are at their best, and gets meat for the 
winter.” 

“ I shall do that,” said Louis enthusias¬ 
tically. “ I am sorry, though, you can’t go.” 

“ That’s what comes of being a girl,” 
answered Margaret somewhat ruefully. 
“ But then, when the fall work is done, 
Father and I go hunting, too, so it isn’t so 
bad.” 

Next morning, now supplied with tools 
fitted to their work, Margaret and Louis re¬ 
turned to the former’s house. Thanks to 
his uncle’s good scythe, a quarter of Mar¬ 
garet’s six acres of small grain was cut by 
nightfall. Three days more finished the job. 


CHAPTER XI 


The late summer and autumn days 
passed very quickly to Louis, for they were 
filled to the brim with activity. Not only 
was the boy busy, but it seemed as if almost 
every day brought a new experience. 

First, there was the completion of harvest 
for his uncle and Margaret. It was nearly 
the first of October before the maize, or 
Indian corn, was cut, and shocked. Then 
the great, golden ears had to he broken from 
the stocks and stripped of husks: a process 
that meant days of lame wrists for the young 
harvester. The small grain, too, was hauled 
in to the threshing floor, and there beaten 
with flails to separate the kernels from the 
chaff. Lastly, hogs belonging to his uncle 
were half chased, half enticed from the 
woods to be marked and released again, or 
butchered for winter use. 

More enjoyable than these occupations 

was the training with rifle and canoe. 

127 


128 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Active as he was in brain and hand, Louis 
quickly acquired a fair mastery of these two 
essentials of frontier life. Then, when the 
harvesting was all done, he went with the 
sergeant for a hunting trip up the Rich¬ 
elieu to Lake Champlain. This journey was 
not without its dangers, for Mohawk incur¬ 
sions were a possibility at any time. No un¬ 
toward incident happened to the hunters, 
however. At the end of two weeks, they 
were back home, their canoe well filled with 
the smoked flesh of a dozen deer and two or 
three black bears. 

To Louis, the experience of this trip was 
invaluable. Living, as he and the sergeant 
must, under the strain of the consciousness 
that at any moment they might meet the 
ferocious Iroquois, the suggestions and 
warnings of the older man drove home with 
a force they could not possibly have had in 
less dangerous surroundings. Louis was 
not as yet a skilled woodsman; only years 
spent in the forest could give him that rat¬ 
ing. He was, however, a lad whom a woods¬ 
man could trust as a companion on the hunt, 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 129 

and, if need be, even on the war-path. He 
could paddle a canoe swiftly and with little 
noise; he could thread his way silently 
through the mazes of the forest; he could 
find his way by the stars, by the course of 
streams, and by the mosses on trees. Per¬ 
haps most important of all, he had learned 
to put in practice the lesson Margaret had 
tried to impress upon his mind, that noise 
in the forest, when unnecessary, is inex¬ 
cusable. 

November had come with the return of the 
two hunters, and November along the St. 
Lawrence and its tributaries usually means 
winter. By the middle of the month, heavy 
snows covered the ground. This brought to 
Louis another new experience. One morn¬ 
ing, after a heavy fall that brought the snow 
to a depth of more than a foot, Margaret ap¬ 
peared in the Dupuy clearing, swinging 
lightly over the glittering white surface on a 
pair of Indian snow-shoes. 

The girl was now a not infrequent visitor 
at the seigniorage. During her childhood, 
she had accepted the poverty of her home as 


130 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


a matter of course. Now that she was be¬ 
ginning to use her reason, she saw that the 
extreme abjectness of this poverty was not 
all due to circumstances, and her heart re¬ 
belled against a life so utterly devoid of all 
that was refined, or even comfortable. From 
this state of discontent, her only relief was 
found in the quiet refinement and the simple 
courtesy that marked the Dupuy home. 

The fact that a lad of her own age lived 
there did not lessen the attractiveness of the 
place. Louis frequently spent a day at her 
home, but neither found this as pleasant as 
when Margaret accepted Madame Lucille’s 
standing invitation to be her guest. 

“ Borrow the sergeant’s snow-shoes, and 
I will teach you how to use them,” she called, 
as she came within ear-shot. 

“ I shall be glad for the lesson,” Louis 
answered, “ but I don’t need to borrow. I 
hired Dumont to make me a pair of snow- 
shoes, and he completed them only yester¬ 
day. So, you see, you are just in time for 
the first lesson.” 

Louis disappeared in the house. A few 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 131 


minutes later he came out, dressed for out¬ 
doors, and with his new snow-shoes under his 
arm. The healthful, outdoor life of the past 
three months had given the lad a clearness of 
eye and skin, and an erectness of stature 
which are Nature’s rewards for those who 
live near to her. He was dressed still in the 
plain woolen suit which he had chosen when 
he first came to the Richelieu, with a cap of 
beaver-skin added. 

If the three months had produced a 
marked change in Louis’ appearance, they 
had done no less for Margaret. She had not 
changed physically. Life in the woods had 
made her perfect in this regard; there was 
nothing to improve. The change in the girl 
was in her attire. Not that new garments 
had been purchased. There were no shops 
on the frontier, even had there been money 
for purchase, which there was not. But 
with the assistance of the skilful hands of 
Madame Lucille, Margaret had remade the 
two dresses she possessed into really attrac¬ 
tive garments. In addition, with a motherly 
tact that could not cause offence, Madame 


132 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


had given the girl good woolen material for 
a suit for outdoor winter wear. 

“ I have had it around for all of ten years, 
my dear/’ she said. “ My husband brought 
it from Montreal one fall when we expected 
to spend some months in town. But I had a 
bad fall that winter, and we couldn’t go, so 
I never made the goods up. I have been 
fighting the moths away from it all this time. 
I shall never use it, so it might as well go 
where it will do some good.” 

So the suit was made. Madame Lucille 
called her nephew into conference when the 
style was to be decided upon. Louis was 
asked to describe, to the best of his ability, 
garments of this type which he had seen in 
France. The boy, of course, could tell little 
of the details, and what he did tell was so 
contradictory that his aunt could get no help 
from him. Then Louis remembered that a 
book he had brought with him had some pic¬ 
tures of young women in it. The book was 
five years old, but it helped, and with this 
assistance to her natural good taste, the 
problem in design was solved. Leggings of 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 133 


the same material, supplementing the short 
skirt, completed the costume, except that the 
sergeant added a round cap of muskrat-skin. 
It was this suit that Margaret wore as she 
and Louis started for a meadow for the les¬ 
son in snow-shoeing. 

As always with a beginner, Louis was as 
clumsy as a boy with his first pair of skates. 
The great frames, four feet long and over a 
foot wide, fastened to his feet only through 
the flexible webbing, simply would not go 
where they should. Many a tumble did the 
lad get, but, fortunately, without suffering a 
sprain. Gradually he attained to a little 
more skill, and, at the end of half an hour, he 
was able to move ahead steadily at a rather 
slow walk. 

“ Lesson’s over,” said Margaret, taking 
off her snow-shoes. “ Let’s walk back to the 
house.” 

“ Oh, don’t quit so soon,” said Louis. 
“ I’m just getting the hang of these big 
baskets. Let’s take a little run in the 
woods.” 

“ And be unable to walk for a week,” 


134 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


answered the girl. “ Did you ever hear of 
mal de raquette? No? Well, it’s the name 
the voyageurs give to what happens td your 
ankles if you use snow-shoes too long before 
you get used to them. Don’t get it. I had 
it once, and it wasn’t pleasant.” 

“ I suppose it is something like the sore¬ 
ness one feels after skating for the first 
time,” answered Louis. “ Well, if we can’t 
go to-day, stay over with us a day and we 

will go to-morrow morning. We- 

Hello! Who’s this coming out of the woods? 
Nobody from around here, I am sure.” 

As the lad spoke, two dark figures 
emerged from the shadow of the forest to 
the north. One was that of a heavily-built 
man of moderate height, dressed in a black 
gown that reached to the ground, or rather 
to the snow. Over this, he wore a coat of 
raccoon-skin. On his head was a large black 
hat; on his feet, snow-shoes. His round face 
was half concealed by a scanty beard, griz¬ 
zled like the hair that showed beneath the 
brim of the hat. 

The companion figure was taller and 



ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 135 


slighter. It was dressed in the garb of the 
wilderness: tunic, leggings, and moccasins of 
deerskin. On the head was a fur cap. The 
smooth skin of the face was that of a youth 
of twenty. 

As Margaret noted the strangers, a cry 
of recognition came from her lips. 

“ It is Vincent, my brother,” she said, 
“ and the man with him is Father Gregory.” 

Without waiting to put her snow-shoes on 
again, the girl raced through the snow to the 
newcomers. Vincent, she greeted with a 
kiss and a bear-like hug. For the priest, 
there was a courtesy. Then, laughing and 
chattering, with an arm around each, she led 
them back across the field to where Louis 
still stood. 

As the three approached, the lad noted 
with interest the faces of the two men. Both 
were reddened by exposure to wind, and 
heat, and cold. Both had blue eyes, that 
showed in striking contrast with their skins. 
These organs of the older man shone with 
the clear light of an honest nature, modestly 
conscious of its own rectitude. Little 


136 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


wrinkles around the eyes, however, revealed 
a kindliness of disposition that could be tol¬ 
erant of lapses of such rectitude on the part 
of another. 

A glance into the countenance of the 
younger man showed, even to the inex¬ 
perienced Louis, a very different character. 
The face indicated a generous nature, but 
the blue eyes met his either with a bold stare, 
or with a shifty glance. Both gave the im¬ 
pression that the man had something to con¬ 
ceal, something that he did not wish his as¬ 
sociates to know. About the mouth, there 
were lines and curves, even so early in life, 
that revealed clearly what the eyes tried 
vainly to hide: a life of dissipation. 

Louis returned the salutations of the pair, 
and all four went to the house. Before they 
reached it, the great oaken door was flung 
wide open by the elder Dupuy. ' 

“Welcome, Father Gregory,” he cried. 
“ Most welcome to the Richelieu. It is 
many a week since you last said mass under 
this roof. A little longer stay, and we 
should all have turned into heathens. And 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 137 


you, Vincent; we are glad to welcome you 
back to the Richelieu.” 

As soon as the travelers had removed 
their outer garments, they were given seats 
before the crackling fire in the great fire¬ 
place. 

“ What word from the west, Vincent? ” 
asked the host, as he stirred the fire to even 
greater activity. 

“ Little that is good,” was the answer. 
“ The English with their cheaper supply of 
goods outbid us French, and more and more 
of the furs that once came to Montreal now 
find their way to Albany. And now that 
war is on again and the Iroquois have taken 
up the hatchet against us, of course, no 
French trader is safe on Lake Ontario. But 
w r e managed to get six canoe-loads of good 
beaver-skins down the Ottawa and safe into 
the Montreal storehouse.” 

No embarrassing details were asked of the 
young man. All present, except Louis, 
knew that the trade in which he was engaged 
was illegal. In fact, the young man had 
joined himself to that great unorganized 


138 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


band of coureurs de hois, which embraced in 
its membership the greater part of the 
Frenchmen to be found west of Montreal. 
Though legally outlaws, these men had fled 
to the forest, not because of crimes com¬ 
mitted, but for the sake of adventure, and to 
escape the poverty and the restrictions of 
life in the settlements. Once freed from the 
conventions of society, however, they had, 
with few exceptions, cast off all restraints of 
law, and of religion. Their morality was 
that of the Indians with whom they lived, 
and whose customs and even clothing they 
frequently adopted. 

The seignior turned to the older of his 
new guests, and inquired regarding his 
parish. This comprised a district of hun¬ 
dreds of square miles. All the settlements 
along the Richelieu, and those on the south 
bank of the St. Lawrence, for twenty or 
more miles each side of the mouth of the 
former stream, were included in Father 
Gregory’s charge. In answer to the ques¬ 
tion, the priest replied: 

“ Matters are not so bad as one might 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 139 

fear, nor so good as I could wish. Thank 
God, we have not been molested by the 
Mohawks this year, and the people have got 
their grain safe in their bins. But the war 
keeps things unsettled. So many of our 
ships have been intercepted by the English 
that the cost of articles from France is pro¬ 
hibitive to our farming people. Then the 
young men are restless. The call of the 
woods and the lakes seems irresistible to 
them.” 

“ Yes,” said the seignior, “ it is hard to 
keep the boys at home, and I am not sur¬ 
prised that it is so when a single canoe-load 
of furs, such as Vincent has just helped 
bring in, is worth as much as the whole crop 
of one of our farms. The fur-trade is a 
gamble, but those who win, win heavily. 
Well, I see that Madame Lucille has dinner 
ready,” he added, rising and tapping the 
ashes out of his pipe into the fireplace. 
“ Perhaps you are not sorry, for a winter 
walk in the woods means a good appetite.” 


CHAPTER XII 


For the first few minutes at the table, a 
hum of conversation filled the room, each 
person talking to his nearest neighbor. 
Then, above the hum, sounded the treble of 
Margaret’s voice. 

“ Oh, Madame Lucille,” she cried ex¬ 
citedly, “ listen to what Vincent has just 
told me. I have an invitation to go to Mon¬ 
treal this winter. You know that I have a 
distant relative there, Madame Prevost, 
whose husband is in the service of the In- 
tendant. She has invited me to spend two 
whole months with her. And that isn’t all. 
This dear, good brother of mine,”—to the 
innocent girl, her brother’s good qualities 
loomed large, while his weaknesses were 
hidden from her—“ Vincent, knew that I 
should want clothes for such an event, and 
his pack is full of nice things for me. Oh, I 
could give him a hundred kisses for the mes¬ 
sage he brought, and for his thoughtful¬ 
ness.” 


140 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 141 


“ I, too, bring an invitation,” said Father 
Gregory. “ It is for Monsieur Louis. 
Lieutenant de La Motte, who came over in 
the same ship with him last summer, unites 
with the other officers of his regiment in ask¬ 
ing that he join their mess for some weeks 
this winter. I met the lieutenant in Mon¬ 
treal, in October. When he heard that my 
parish was on the Richelieu, he asked me to 
be the bearer of his message.” 

“ Oh, then we can go together, Louis,” 
said Margaret. 

The lad looked a little doubtful. “ That 
would be a pretty long journey afoot, 
wouldn’t it? ” he asked. 

“Long! No,” replied Margaret. “It 
isn’t more than thirty miles. When you get 
used to your snow-shoes, we can easily do it 
in a day. Oh, I know what you are think¬ 
ing of,” she continued. “You came by 
canoe from Montreal, and that route is a 
long one. You see the St. Lawrence runs 
just a little east of north from Montreal to 
the mouth of the Richelieu. The Richelieu 
rims almost due north from here; so, while 


142 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


it is nearly a hundred miles to Montreal by 
river, it is less than a third as far by land.” 

There were now more busy hours for 
Madame Lucille and Margaret, and consul¬ 
tations with Louis, and even with Father 
Gregory, to determine the style of the new 
garments. At the end of a month, all was 
ready for the journey. 

The two young people were not to go 
alone. At the suggestion of Madame Lu¬ 
cille, the sergeant, Dumont, was to act as a 
guide, and as a kind of male chaperon. 
Winter had now fully come. The snow, two 
feet deep, was of a clear whiteness, for there 
was neither dust nor smoke to mar its 
perfect purity. The air, on the morning of 
the start, possessed the crispness that comes 
only with intense cold combined with low 
humidity; a crispness that caused the ac¬ 
companying cold to be almost unnoticed. 

Margaret and Louis carried only their 
rifles. These indispensable weapons could 
not be left behind, even on a holiday jour¬ 
ney. The sergeant, however, in addition to 
carrying his rifle, pulled a large but light 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 143 


sled. On this, were the suits and dresses of 
the young people, that, once in town, were to 
transform them into the likeness of city 
dwellers. All three of the travelers were, of 
course, on snow-shoes, the long, narrow kind 
made especially for forest journeys. 

It was a merry journey. There was, of 
course, no trail. Any that may have existed 
had been obliterated by the heavy mantle of 
snow that covered the ground. Dumont, 
however, had no need of landmarks for 
guidance. He knew the direction of his 
goal, and with unerring instinct, like a wild 
animal of the forest, he held his course 
toward it. 

The past month had been spent by Louis 
largely on his snow-shoes, that he might be 
prepared for this journey. He had acquired 
a very fair amount of skill in the use of 
these implements, indispensable in the 
forest. He found now, however, in spite of 
his rather strenuous training, that he had 
difficulty in keeping up with the sergeant, 
though he traveled light, while the guide 
pulled a loaded sled. Such a thing as 


144 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


fatigue seemed to be unknown to the latter’s 
tough sinews. Repeatedly Louis, as well as 
Margaret, offered to relieve him of his load, 
but he declined. It was nothing, he said, 
and he thought they would make better 
progress as they were. 

Noting the long, unwearied stride of the 
sergeant, his young companions were forced 
to the same conclusion, for their own legs 
were beginning to feel the effects of the swift 
pace. 

At intervals of about two hours, the 
leader stopped for a ten-minute rest, lest his 
companions should grow leg-weary. A 
longer halt was made at noon while the 
luncheon they had brought with them was 
eaten. To Louis’ surprise, the food, bread 
and meat, which had been carried on the 
sledge, was frozen stiff. 

“ Why, I didn’t think it was cold at all,” 
he exclaimed, as he forced his teeth into a 
chunk of frosty meat. “ I have been per¬ 
fectly warm all the way. Well, the meat 
tastes good after such a walk, even if it is 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 145 


The lad felt a little stiff when Dumont got 
up to resume the journey, but the soreness 
soon wore off. 

The short winter day came to a close, and 
the end of the journey was not yet in sight. 
For a time, the three journeyed on in the 
twilight, but soon it became too dark to 
travel comfortably among the trees. 

“We will rest for a while,” said Dumont. 
“ We have about five miles more to go. The 
moon will be up in an hour; then we will 
finish our journey.” 

A fire was built, and by its most accept¬ 
able warmth the remains of the luncheon 
were thawed out and eaten. Soon a glow 
shimmered through the naked branches of 
the trees, followed by the silvery whiteness 
of the moon’s orb. Then little patches of 
light began to appear on the surface of the 
snow, and soon the forest was as light as in 
the twilight that had just gone. 

When the journey was resumed, it was at 
a more leisurely pace than had been set dur¬ 
ing the daytime. Falls in the half light 
would have been more than probable if any 


146 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


attempt had been made to hurry, and falls 
might have meant injury. As it was, two 
hours brought the party to the eastern bank 
of the St. Lawrence. 

As the three moved out of the shadows of 
the forest, a little gasp of surprise and ap¬ 
preciation came from Margaret’s lips. 

“ Isn’t it beautiful? ” she almost whis¬ 
pered, not expecting or wishing an answer. 

It was indeed a beautiful sight, both above 
and around the travelers. The full moon 
and the stars glowed in the black sky like 
electric beacons. Ahead lay the broad river, 
now ice-bound and blanketed with snow that 
glistened in the frosty air. Beyond the ice- 
plain rose the huge bulk of Mount Royal. 
Seemingly at the base of the mountain, 
though in reality nearly two miles from it, 
twinkled the lights of the town. 

An hour later, the three travelers had 
reached their various destinations: Mar¬ 
garet, the luxurious home of Madame Pre- 
vost; Louis, the room of Lieutenant de La 
Motte; the sergeant, the home of one of his 


numerous cousins. 


CHAPTER XIII 


“A letter for Monsieur Louis Dupuy.” 
So announced the buxom matron with whom 
Louis, as the guest of Lieutenant de La 
Motte, had lodged for now over three weeks. 

The lieutenant, who had received the mis¬ 
sive from his hostess, smiled quizzically at 
his guest as he examined its exterior. 

“ Tinted and perfumed stationery, seal¬ 
ing wax imprinted with an R, and feminine 
handwriting,” he said. “ Really, Louis, you 
must read this aloud.” 

Louis flushed slightly at his companion’s 
banter, but he took it in good part. He 
broke the seal on the paper, and glanced at 
its contents. 

“ Certainly,” he said, “ for you are as 
much concerned as I. It is a note from my 
cousin, Mademoiselle de La Ronde, written 
for her hostess, Madame Prevost. It is an 
invitation to both of us to attend a reception 
and ball to be given in honor of the gover- 

147 


148 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


nor of the colony. It will be at the Prevost 
home, and will be given on New Year’s 
night.” 

“A ball, and in Montreal,” cried the lieu¬ 
tenant. “ Well, that is luck, for of all the 
somber, dead towns it was ever my fortune 
to be quartered in, Montreal is the worst. 
What between the Sulpitian priests who 
own the town, and the Jesuits who think 
they own the province, we are kept as sober 
as an English Puritan. I wonder that 
Madame Prevost has had the nerve to plan 
such a thing as a ball.” 

“ I have seen her but once,” replied Louis, 
“ but she struck me as a most determined 
sort of person. She is very nice, and very 
cordial. I suspect, however, that she usually 
has her way when she wills it.” 

“ We’ll hope she will have it this time,” 
said De La Motte. “ My feet are simply 
aching to get on a dancing floor again. Six 
long months it has been since you and I left 
Paris, and not even the tiniest little party 
have I seen. Sometimes, I get out here in 
the middle of the floor all alone and dance 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 149 

the Courante, for my legs simply must 
loosen up.” 

Louis laughed at the gay young lieuten¬ 
ant. “ I should think your legs would have 
had sufficient exercise in hopping over the 
mud-puddles of Montreal streets,” he said, 
“ to say nothing of holding you up on the 
heaving deck of the Superb.” 

“ Perhaps so, as far as mere exercise is 
concerned,” replied the lieutenant. “ But 
you know that is only a small part of the 
charm of the dance; the music, the lights, 
the beautiful women, the whispered noth- 
mgs- 

“ Enough, enough,” cried Louis. “ If 
you go on this way, you won’t be able to 
wait even the week until New Year’s Day. 
Now, as seasoned Parisians, let us give these 
good people of Montreal a little surprise. 
You have heard of the minuet, the new dance 
that has just come out. Did you learn the 
step? ” 

“ Yes indeed,” answered De La Motte. 
“ I took some lessons in it in preparation for 
one of the court receptions, and as luck 



150 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


would have it, I have the score of some music 
for it with me. Do you know the dance? ” 

“Well enough to go through it,” said 
Louis. “ What do you say to my proposing 
to Madame Prevost that she and my cousin, 
with you and me, dance it at her ball? You 
will be able to teach our two partners, and 
can take the roughness out of my step.” 

“ With all my heart,” answered the lieu¬ 
tenant, “ and I don’t doubt that Madame will 
be delighted with your proposition. It will 
be a fine feather in her cap to put on some¬ 
thing that is, as yet, hardly known in Paris 
itself, outside the court circles. And now 
another matter, not so important as a ball, 
of course, but not to be overlooked, occurs 
to me. The colonel of our regiment told us 
this morning of a projected expedition to 
bring the sting of war to our Puritan friends 
of New England. After some persuading, 
he consented to let me take part in it, and as 
I thought you might like to go along as a 
volunteer, I got his consent to that also. 
After all, it didn’t take a great deal of 
persuasion to get the appointments, for after 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 151 


a show of willingness to go, the other officers 
seemed not at all displeased to have me in¬ 
sist upon my need of the experience of such 
a trip.” 

Louis laughed. 

“ Perhaps the fact that they have already 
had the experience has something to do with 
this attitude,” he said. “ When I was hunt¬ 
ing along Lake Champlain last fall, my 
guide pointed out to me some high moun¬ 
tains far to the southeast. Beyond these, he 
said, is the valley of a large river, called by 
the English the Connecticut, which flows 
into the ocean, or a sound, not far from the 
old Dutch town of New Amsterdam. The 
frontier settlements of New England are in 
that valley. It will be a long winter march 
to the nearest of them. But I am glad to 
have the invitation to go with you,” the lad 
continued. “ The people among whom I 
have lived on the Richelieu have suffered 
much from the hands of the Mohawks, the 
allies of the English. I should like to have a 
chance to strike back for them.” 

New Year’s Day came, crisp, bracing. It 


152 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


was cold, so cold that the iron-shod sleighs 
creaked and squeaked as they slid over the 
hard-packed snow in the streets, and the 
breath of the oxen that drew them froze in 
their nostrils. Little attention was paid to 
the temperature, however, by the merry 
throng that found its way to the home of 
Madame Prevost. An abundance of the 
finest furs protected them on the way; while, 
within, roaring fires in huge fireplaces dis¬ 
pelled every trace of winter’s cold. 

The company that enjoyed the warmth of 
these fires was representative of the political 
and social leaders of this remote French pos¬ 
session. 

Before one great fireplace, surrounded by 
satellites, stood the governor of the province, 
the principal guest of honor. Not often was 
Montreal honored with the presence of this 
chief magistrate, Vaudreuil, the immediate 
representative of the great Louis. Quebec 
was his capital, and seldom did he leave it to 
visit the rival town. 

In another room, in the center of a group 
of men, stood the intendant of the province, 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 153 


Champigny. It was not by mere chance 
that a considerable distance separated him 
from the governor. His office required of 
him to spy upon the acts of his nominal 
superior, and to report his observations to 
the French court. Under such circum¬ 
stances it was not to be expected that much 
cordiality should exist between the two of¬ 
ficials. In fact, in Canada, governor and 
intendant were almost invariably at swords’ 
points. 

Great merchants of the town were among 
the guests, men whose fortunes rose and fell 
with the fur-trade upon which the colony 
lived. Almost equally dependent were they 
upon the good-will of the intendant, whose 
arbitrary decrees, which none short of Paris 
might question, made or broke them. 

Scattered here and there about the rooms 
were half a dozen men whose sunburned 
countenances seemed strangely out of keep¬ 
ing with the silks and laces of their costumes. 
Some of these were officers of frontier gar¬ 
risons, enjoying a winter in civilization be¬ 
tween summers spent in the western wilder- 


154 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


ness. Others were leaders of irregular 
bands of adventurers and traders, looked 
upon with disfavor by the government, yet 
indispensable to it in its dealings with the 
Indians. 

The attire of the company bespoke the 
exigencies of life in a remote corner of the 
world in a time of war. Many brilliant cos¬ 
tumes were there, fresh from the hands of 
the skilled tailors and dressmakers of Paris. 
The owners of these were classed among the 
fortunate ones whose credit was good in 
Franee, and whose consignments had passed 
through the cordon of English cruisers. 

Other costumes were a compilation of gar¬ 
ments of various ages and conditions, rem¬ 
nants from previous seasons. Little was 
thought of these inconsistencies of attire, 
however. “ It is the war,” was the universal 
and accepted explanation. Besides, in the 
unstable state of affairs in the colony, pros¬ 
perity was as uncertain as the running of 
goods through the blockade, so it was the 
part of wisdom, even in the most fortunate, 
to be sparing of criticism. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 155 


Inconsistencies, even crudities of attire, 
did not affect the enjoyment of the ball by 
these pleasure-loving people. Unlike the 
case in the New England of that time, re¬ 
strictions upon their amusements were not 
self-imposed. They were, therefore, re¬ 
sented, and now that one of their social 
leaders had dared disregard them, her guests 
were in a humor to enjoy themselves without 
stint. Games of a dozen varieties were 
under way at the same time, accompanied 
by a volume of chatter that would have done 
credit to a monkey cage, or to a modern 
house-party. Refreshments as varied as the 
games did not lessen the joviality of the 
players. 

Finally came the dances, and as a climax, 
the minuet. As Louis went with Margaret 
through the steps and hows of this most 
graceful of all dances, it seemed impossible 
that the fairy-like figure before him was the 
same creature whom he had first seen in 
homespun and buckskin on the Richelieu. 
To his masculine eyes, any little shortcom¬ 
ings in the style of her costume were lost, 


156 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


and he saw only a girlish face of exquisite 
beauty above the graceful curves and folds 
of her shimmering silks. 

That Margaret herself was supremely 
happy, no one who noted her shining eyes 
and the light laughter on her lips could 
doubt. Dismal days of deprivation on the 
Richelieu were forgotten, or served only as a 
dark setting for the glittering jewel of 
present happiness. The girl danced beauti¬ 
fully. To inborn grace of movement were 
added the suppleness and strength of muscle 
that came from free and natural living. The 
compliments on her performance that came 
from the lips of her male partners in the 
minuet were no mere idle words. 

When the rounds of applause that fol¬ 
lowed the conclusion of the dance had sub¬ 
sided, La Motte turned to Louis. 

“ I was speaking to the governor a few 
minutes ago,” he said. “ I told him of your 
offer to accompany us on our expedition. 
He said he should like to see you after the 
dance.” 

As Louis approached the governor, that 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 157 


official eyed him with the keenness of one 
whose business it was to analyze the charac¬ 
ters of all with whom he came in contact. 
Little did the governors of Canada have 
upon which to rely to carry out the policies 
and instructions of the French court, other 
than the resources of their own hearts and 
brains. Spied upon and harassed by their 
intendants, often opposed by the clergy, 
practically defied in the execution of the 
laws by the great traders and the outlaws of 
the lakes, they bore almost alone the burden 
of the defense of the colony, and of the ex¬ 
tension of French influence to the remote 
regions of the west. Under such circum¬ 
stances, loyal supporters were invaluable, 
and if the face of even a very young man 
bore marks of a character that could be relied 
upon to give itself in unselfish service to the 
colony and to its king, such a man was not 
to be lightly passed by. 

The cordiality of his greeting indicated 
that Vaudreuil hoped to find in Louis such 
a character. After returning the young 
man’s bow, the governor extended his hand. 


158 ESCAPING TPIE MOHAWKS 


Louis gripped it with a grasp that made the 
official wince. 

“ You have a strong hand for a gentle¬ 
man,” he said, but not unkindly. “ Where 
did you get your blacksmith grip? ” 

He raised the lad’s hand to inspect it. 
Louis flushed a little. The few weeks of 
idleness in Montreal had been all too short 
a time to erase the tan and the callouses that 
had come with the hard work of the summer 
and autumn. His hands were clean; con¬ 
stant attention had assured that. Other¬ 
wise, they would have done credit to the son 
of a peasant. 

In spite of embarrassment, the governor’s 
question must be answered. Louis deter¬ 
mined to answer it frankly. 

“ I spent the autumn and part of the sum¬ 
mer with my uncle, the Sieur Georges 
Dupuy, at his home on the Richelieu,” he 
said. “ There was much work to do and few 
hands to do it; so I tried to do my share. 
I suppose swinging a scythe and husking 
corn have strengthened my hands.” 

“ In Paris, such an admission would have 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 159 


convicted you of a heinous social crime,” the 
governor answered with a smile. “ Here, I 
will only say that I wish more of our sons 
of good families were as willing to harden 
their hands with the scythe and the spade as 
they are with the rifle and the paddle. They 
would make my problems much easier of 
solution. But Georges Dupuy,” the official 
continued; “ that name sounds familiar to 
me, though I am sure I never met your 
uncle. Ah! I have it. I believe La Motte 
said you came over with him in the Superb. 
The commander of that vessel, Captain 
Pirard, is an old friend of mine. He told 
me about you, and mentioned having served 
with your uncle in an expedition against the 
Iroquois a number of years ago. Fine fel¬ 
low, Pirard; one of the best officers in his 
Majesty’s navy. 

“ Well,” he continued, “ La Motte tells me 
you are to go with him on this little excur¬ 
sion of ours against the Puritans. It will 
be a hard trip, hut you seem fitted for it. It 
is necessary that we do something to keep 
our Abnaki Indians stirred up against the 


160 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


English. A number of them will go along 
with you. Their losses will embitter them 
against our enemies. Do you use snow- 
shoes? ” 

“ I came from the Richelieu to Montreal 
on them in one day,” answered Louis briefly. 
His mind was on the glimpse he had just 
had of the policy of the French government 
in its war with the English colonies. He 
half regretted that he had asked to go with 
the expedition, one that was meant to bring 
death and destruction to simple, innocent 
villagers in order that their savage foes 
might be stirred to even greater excesses of 
cruelty. But he had volunteered to go, and 
he would not back out. 

Three days after the ball, Margaret and 
Louis brought their visit to an end. As soon 
as it was light on the river, they and the 
sergeant, Dumont, began their thirty-mile 
journey homeward. The start was brisk 
enough, but before five miles had been 
passed, both the young people were lagging 
far behind their guide. 

“ I don’t know what is the matter with 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 161 


me,” said Margaret. “ I don’t seem to have 
any strength in my legs, and I am all out 
of breath. I never felt so in my life.” 

Louis stopped and laughed. 

“ Now you know how I felt last summer,” 
he said, “ when I first tried to use my uncle’s 
scythe. A month of idleness will soften the 
hardest of muscles; except,” he added, 
glancing enviously at the sergeant as he 
plodded steadily on, dragging his sledge; 
“ except those of Dumont. He must have 
changed his into steel once for all, so nothing 
affects them now.” 

When the sergeant noted the difficulty 
his young companions had in keeping up 
with his swift stride, he changed it to a slow 
walk, and insisted that, once an hour, they 
take off their snow-shoes and rub their feet 
and ankles vigorously. 

“ We won’t get home very early,” he 
said, “ but a late supper is better than the 
cramps.” 

As darkness settled over the forest the 
sound of rushing water came to their ears. 

“ Why, we must be out of our way,” said 


162 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

Louis. “ These must be the rapids of the 
Richelieu, and they are fully ten miles below 
my uncle’s farm.” 

“ The sergeant never loses his way,” an¬ 
swered Margaret. “ I hadn’t thought to 
suggest it, but he has brought us to the river 
while it was daylight. Now we can easily 
travel on the ice of the river by the light of 
the stars. How stupid of me not to think of 
it, too; but I haven’t been thinking of much 
of anything lately except that delightful 
baU.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


Only three weeks after the return of 
Margaret and Louis from Montreal was the 
time set for the departure of the winter ex¬ 
pedition from that town. Warned by the 
painful cramps that kept him awake most of 
the night following his return to the Dupuy 
home, Louis determined to be fully ready 
for his next journey. Part of every day was 
spent in the woods, and by the end of three 
weeks, he was fit for anything that might 
come. 

As the Dupuy estate lay in the direct 
route from Montreal to the headwaters of 
the Connecticut River, it had been arranged 
that it should be one of the stopping-places 
for the expedition. The exact date for the 
start was unknown at the time Louis left 
Montreal, and there had been no means of 
communication since then. About the end 
of January had been fixed as the probable 
date. 


163 


164 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The expected passage of the force through 
the frontier community was an event of the 
first importance. For weeks, little else was 
talked of; its size, guesses regarding which 
ran so high as to cover all the able-bodied 
men in Canada; its leadership; its purpose, 
which Dame Rumor said included certainly 
the conquest of all New England and pos¬ 
sibly the rest of the English provinces. Con¬ 
ceptions of geography were very vague on 
the Richelieu, though hardly more so than 
in official circles in Quebec and Montreal. 

At last, after a week of anxious expecta¬ 
tion, came definite word of the approach of 
the expedition. A lad of fourteen, from one 
of the farms down the river, was seen speed¬ 
ing on his snow-shoes over the snow-covered 
surface of the stream. When a half-mile 
away, he began to shout his message. 

“ The soldiers, the soldiers,” he cried. 
“ They are coming up the river.” 

Louis, who happened to be outside the 
house, guessed the nature of the message, 
though he could not understand the words. 
With a whoop of excitement he bounded 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 165 

into the kitchen where his aunt was baking 
great quantities of bread, in anticipation of 
the coming of the expected guests. 

“ They are coming, Auntie,” he shouted; 
“ they are coming.” 

“ Did you see them, Louis? ” Madame 
asked. “ How many of them are there? ” 
Like an officer in charge of the commissary, 
her first thought must needs be whether she 
had made adequate preparation to supply 
the demands of the military stomachs. 

An hour later, around a distant bend of 
the river, appeared a score of dark, scattered 
dots, which gradually resolved themselves 
into the skin-clad forms of Indian warriors. 
They were scouts preceding the main body 
of the expedition. Then a dark mass of men 
came in sight. 

Fifty Canadians and French, and a hun¬ 
dred Indians constituted the force; not 
enough to conquer provinces, but sufficient 
to bring terror to unprotected frontier set¬ 
tlements. In addition, another hundred 
Abnaki were to be picked up on the Con¬ 
necticut. 


166 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Remarkable as it may seem, the Indians 
who had come from Montreal were Iroquois. 
Persuaded and cajoled by the arts of diplo¬ 
macy, they had agreed to forget their tradi¬ 
tional hatred of the French. They had even 
been induced to leave their own people, and 
to establish the town of Caughnawaga, on 
the St. Lawrence, a little above Montreal. 
Here they lived under the eye, though not 
under the power, of their white neighbors; 
useful, but uncertain allies. Not to be 
trusted to serve against the English of New 
York, with whom, in fact, they kept up an 
illicit but profitable traffic in furs, they were 
always ready to strike the more distant 
New England settlements, for that, too, was 
profitable. 

All the occupants of the house were gath¬ 
ered in front of it as the scouts came across 
the snow-covered fields from the river bank. 
Margaret, too, was there, on one of her 
frequent visits. Suddenly the girl gave a 
little exclamation of alarm. She turned to 
the seignior. 

“ They are Mohawks,” she said, hardly 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 167 


above a whisper. “ I know them by the 
decorations on their leggings.” 

“ Is she right, Sergeant? ” asked Dupuy 
of his friend who stood beside him. “ My 
eyes are not good enough to distinguish the 
marks at this distance. If it is a hostile 
band, we are trapped.” 

“ Margaret is right,” answered Dumont, 
“ they are Iroquois, and mostly Mohawks, 
but the guns they carry were not made in 
England. These are Indians from Caugh- 
nawaga, unless my eyes deceive me. No 
doubt they are friendly, though I can’t say 
that I like to have a band of Mohawks 
around, even as friends.” 

The manner of the newcomers soon dis¬ 
pelled any doubts as to the nature of their 
intentions. Dupuy, who spoke the Iroquois 
tongue, greeted them with the usual saluta¬ 
tion, “ Ugh.” Reply was made in like form. 
Then the Indians gathered in a group to 
await the arrival of the main body. 

The Mohawks possessed a strange fas¬ 
cination for Margaret. Since her earliest 
childhood, the name of this tribe had stood 


168 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


in her mind as a symbol of all that was hate¬ 
ful in man. Now, as she looked at the group 
of Indians, she felt the same instinctive re¬ 
pulsion that one feels in the presence of even 
a harmless snake; an illogical repulsion per¬ 
haps, but one indelibly stamped in our being 
by the dreads and sufferings of thousands 
of barefooted ancestors. The imprint on her 
mind and soul of agonizing hours, when as a 
little girl she had endured the terror of In¬ 
dian attacks, would never be effaced. As a 
Christian, she might forgive; as a reasoning 
being, she might school her mind to forget; 
but, in spite of all, a Mohawk would be to 
her, to the end of her days, an object of loath¬ 
ing. So did the terrible experiences of the 
frontier affect not only this sweet, high- 
minded girl, but thousands of other girls, 
and boys, too, whose fortune it was to be 
reared on the American sector of the far- 
flung battle-line of civilization. 

If the Mohawks were objects of intense 
interest to the little group of whites, the lat¬ 
ter and their surroundings were not less so 
to the band of savages. The dark faces, still 


I 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 169 

smeared with the paint of the war-dance that 
had preceded the start of the expedition, re¬ 
mained impassive, but the beady eyes took 
in every visible detail of the house and out¬ 
buildings, as well as of their occupants. 

The chief in command of the party of 
scouts was tall and powerfully built, as 
suited the leader of a band of stalwart 
athletes. He was young for his position, 
probably not more than thirty years of age, 
but his face indicated the qualities of mind 
that fitted him for the headship of his savage 
crew. Aggressiveness was there, combined 
with the cunning and cruelty that consti¬ 
tuted the principal stock in trade of the In¬ 
dian warrior. The outstanding feature of 
his countenance, however, was a livid scar, 
the trace of a knife-cut, that ran from the 
right eye to the mouth. In the healing, the 
mouth had been distorted, and now was fixed 
in a hideous grin that gave the whole face a 
look of diabolical ferocity. It was a face 
that, seen once, would never pass from 
memory. 

With an apparent desire to show friend- 


170 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

liness toward the one who was to be tem¬ 
porarily host to him and his mates, this chief 
advanced toward the group that still stood 
at the door of the house. As he stepped for¬ 
ward, Louis heard a suppressed exclamation 
at his side. It came from Margaret, who 
gripped his arm nervously. 

“ I know that man,” she whispered. “ He 
was leader of the band that attacked our 
house two years ago.” 

The near approach of the Mohawk pre¬ 
vented further conversation. The chief ad¬ 
dressed the elder Dupuy in broken French, 
supplemented by words from his own lan¬ 
guage. 

“ Ugh,” he said, repeating the former 
greeting. “ My name Fighting Wolf. 
Your name? ” 

“ My name is Dupuy, Georges Dupuy,” 
was the answer. “ I am glad to welcome 
you to my home, Fighting Wolf.” 

So said the seignior, but there was little 
warmth in the welcome. The memory of the 
seventeen attacks, to which the speaker had 
been subjected by the Mohawks, was still 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 171 


vivid. However, the blunt sensibilities of 
the savage were not disturbed by any lack 
of friendliness on the part of his host. 

“ Me know this house,” he said. “ Me 
here two summers ago. Then fight for Eng¬ 
lish king. Now no like English. Fight for 
French king.” Then, pointing to Margaret 
who stood near the seignior, he continued 
with a grin that his disfigurement turned 
into a hideous leer, “ She your daughter? ” 

“ No,” replied Dupuy. “ She is the 
daughter of a neighbor and cousin who lives 
in the last house up the river.” 

A gleam of intense interest shot from the 
Mohawk’s eyes. 

“ She girl who fought Iroquois two sum¬ 
mers ago? ” he asked. “ One girl, one 
woman, one man in little house? Me in that 
war-party.” 

The Mohawk’s admission, or statement 
rather, for there was no apology in word or 
manner, that he had taken part in the most 
recent attack upon the Richelieu settlement 
was too much for the composure of the sei¬ 
gnior, for he was a Frenchman with a 


172 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Frenchman’s quick temper. His face red¬ 
dened at the words of the Indian, and his 
voice was thick with anger as he replied: 

“ She is the girl, and if her father had 
drawn as true a bead as she, few of your 
cowardly crew would have gone back to your 
filthy lodges on the Mohawk.” 

Meager as was his knowledge of French, 
there could be no doubt that Fighting Wolf 
fully understood the meaning of the sei¬ 
gnior’s words. His face darkened with 
anger, all but the great scar which glowed 
vivid red. 

“ Me fight you once,” he said with a vicious 
snarl. “Me come again, fight you, burn 
your house. Then take girl away to Mo¬ 
hawk lodge.” 

With this threat, Fighting Wolf rejoined 
his band, and, without waiting for the arrival 
of the main body, led the way to a bivouac 
in the forest. 

As the buckskin-clad forms disappeared 
among the dark trunks of the trees, the sei¬ 
gnior turned a troubled face to his friend, 
the sergeant. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 173 


“A hasty word, and foolishly spoken,” he 
said in self-reproach. “ Still, an open enemy 
is perhaps less dangerous than a pretended 
friend, and there is no question now where 
this Fighting Wolf stands. Well, we must 
keep a sharp lookout or he will burn us out 
before he and his band get away from here.” 


CHAPTER XV 


The approach of the main body of the 
expedition prevented further conversation. 
First came the Indians, four score of them, 
all Iroquois. Like their predecessors, the 
scouts, they were dressed in winter costumes 
of soft, tanned deerskin, crudely tailored, 
hut comfortable. Fur caps, fur-lined mit¬ 
tens, and moccasins protected their extremi¬ 
ties from the danger of frost-bite. 

The fifty whites who followed the Mo¬ 
hawks were dressed not unlike their savage 
associates, except that perhaps half of them 
wore coats and trousers of woolen. The rest, 
coureurs de bois from the western lakes and 
forests, were as like the Indians in their at¬ 
tire as they were in heart and actions. 

All, whites and Indians alike, were on 
snow-shoes, and a third of their number 
drew long, light sledges, partly loaded with 
food and ammunition. The arms of the 
band consisted solely of the rifles and mus¬ 
kets on their shoulders. Their beds were 

174 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 175 


their blanket rolls. Of tents and artillery, 
there were none. 

“ Greetings, friend Louis.” It was the 
voice of Lieutenant de La Motte that spoke, 
though Louis might have had difficulty in 
recognizing at a glance the face and form of 
his friend, disguised as they were by the 
unfamiliar garb. 

“ Greetings,” said the officer again, as he 
approached and took his friend’s hand. 
“And Mademoiselle de La Ronde,” he con- 
tinued, turning to Margaret with a bow, the 
grace of which might have seemed a bit in¬ 
congruous with his rough garb and snow- 
shoes, and the heavy rifle in his hand. But 
La Motte could not have appeared ungrace¬ 
ful in any costume. 

The leader of the expedition was now pre¬ 
sented, Her tel de Rouville. With him, were 
his four brothers. These five, with La Motte, 
were invited into the house. The remaining 
whites were given quarters in the outbuild¬ 
ings. The Indians, whom Dupuy did not 
feel that he could trust in his buildings, 
found shelter in the forest. 


176 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The loyalty of the seignior and his good 
wife to their king, which for many years had 
found no adequate means of expression, 
now manifested itself in unbounded hos¬ 
pitality toward that king’s servants. Food 
of every variety possible on the frontier sat¬ 
isfied the keen hunger of the more favored 
guests. A young steer and half a dozen 
hogs were slaughtered for the benefit of 
their white followers and of the Indians, 
while Madame Lucille’s loaves and cakes 
were distributed generally and generously. 

To the sergeant had been assigned the 
task of carrying food to the Iroquois. On 
his return, he sought out the seignior. 

“We might as well have saved half those 
hogs we killed,” he said, a note of disgust in 
his voice. “ It seemed to me when I was 
picking them out that not all the hogs were 
in the pen. When I got to the camp of 
Fighting Wolf and his band, they were al¬ 
ready having a feast at your expense. They 
had stolen and killed four of your best hogs.” 

Dumont had not whispered this bit of in¬ 
formation. His words were heard by all the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 177 

guests present. On hearing them, Lieuten¬ 
ant de La Motte turned to his commander, 
De Rouville. 

“ This is an outrage,” he said. “ To think 
that our Indians should plunder our host’s 
pens, after the generous treatment he has 
given us. I trust the guilty ones will be 
punished, and severely.” 

De Rouville, who sat beside the fire smok¬ 
ing, answered composedly and without tak¬ 
ing his pipe from between his teeth. 

“ Indian allies on the war-path are never 
punished,” he said. “ Besides, the loss of the 
four hogs is of no consequence to our host. 
I have with me an order from his Excel¬ 
lency, the intendant, requiring the Sieur 
Dupuy to furnish us with necessary sup¬ 
plies for our journey. I shall deduct the 
four hogs from the amount called for, so the 
loss will be no loss at all.” 

“An order from the intendant.” Dupuy 
repeated the words. His face was grave. 
He had never before suffered from the exac¬ 
tions of the arbitrary Canadian government; 
his isolated situation had protected him. 


178 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


But he knew well from hearsay how harsh 
those exactions could be. “ May I see the 
paper? ” he asked. 

The document was produced. It was in 
the form of a requisition upon the seignior. 
It required him to furnish the expedition 
with twenty hogs, six cows or steers, and a 
thousand pounds of grain or the equivalent 
in meal. Payment was to be made at speci¬ 
fied rates, ruinously low, by an order on the 
French treasury. 

As Dupuy read, his face became more and 
more serious. 

“ His Excellency, the intendant, seems to 
be well informed regarding my affairs, Mon¬ 
sieur de Rouville, ,, he said with a touch of 
bitterness in his voice. “ When this requisi¬ 
tion is filled, my bins, my pens, and my 
stalls will all be empty. A raid by the Mo¬ 
hawks would have been less disastrous to me 
than the visit of my friends, for Monsieur, 
no doubt, knows that years will pass before 
payment is made.” 

The officer bowed his agreement. 

“ His Excellency is, no doubt, well in- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 179 


formed regarding the affairs of all Cana¬ 
dians of rank,” he said. “ In your case, a 
little discreet questioning of your friend 
Dumont supplied the detailed information 
desired.” 

As De Rouville spoke, Dupuy recovered 
his composure. 

“ Gentlemen,” he said, “ though this order 
comes as a surprise to me, and its terms seem 
harsh, I shall obey as a loyal subject of our 
gracious king. When these supplies have 
been furnished, I shall be not only without 
food for my family, but all my animals for 
breeding and for working my farm will be 
gone. But I have profited by the bounty 
of the king, and it shall not be said that I 
withheld aught that I possessed from his 
service. I shall be glad to assist you in any 
way in preparing the supplies for transpor¬ 
tation. My mill is available for grinding the 
grain into flour, and my ovens for making 
the flour into bread.” 

For three days the expedition remained 
on the Dupuy estate, busy with its final 
preparations for the long journey across the 


180 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


mountains. On the third day, its force was 
increased by a dozen tenant farmers, half of 
the man-power of the Richelieu settlement. 
These unhappy men were not volunteers. 
They had been chosen by lot, were forced to 
serve almost without pay, and were, in addi¬ 
tion, required to furnish their arms and a 
large part of the food for their subsistence. 
So were the forces raised that, for half a 
century, enabled sparsely settled Canada to 
resist the vastly superior numbers of her 
English neighbors. 

Among the conscripts from the Richelieu 
was the farmer Baptiste Perrot, De La 
Ronde’s tenant. As the expedition formed 
for its start, the entire band of Perrots, with 
the mother at the head, stood in the snow 
watching. The children were gay and ex¬ 
cited, but the mother’s eyes were red with 
weeping, for hers was the greatest sacrifice 
of all. 

Louis bade farewell to his relatives in the 
house. After a kiss on his aunt’s cheek, and 
another on Margaret’s hand, he turned to 
his uncle. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 181 


“ I was told by De La Motte of the de¬ 
mands made upon you by the intendant,” he 
said. “May I ask if you have made any 
arrangements to carry you over the months 
before next harvest? ” 

“ I shall buy food,” was the reply. “ I 
have a little money in the house, and, in any 
case, I believe my credit is good with my 
neighbors. The harvests were good this 
year, and I shall have no difficulty, I think, 
in obtaining enough for our needs.” 

“ I brought a hundred livres from Mon¬ 
treal,” replied Louis, “ and I have credit for 
five thousand with a merchant there. I 
should be glad to leave an order on him with 
you.” 

“ I thank you for the offer, but there will 
be no need, I think,” said his uncle. “ I 
suggest, however, that you take the hundred 
livres with you. You may be able to do 
much good with them.” 

The arrival of the French officers to bid 
their hosts good-bye interrupted the conver¬ 
sation, and prevented Louis from asking 
just the meaning of his uncle’s last sentence. 


182 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The commander, De Rouville, shook 
Dupuy’s hand cordially. 

“ I bid good-bye, I am sure, to a most 
loyal subject of the king,” he said, “ and, in 
appreciation of that loyalty, I have exer¬ 
cised my discretion in carrying out the in- 
tendant’s order for supplies. I have taken 
but three-fourths of the grain and hogs, and 
half the cattle called for. That will leave 
breeding and work animals, and food enough 
for the winter and spring. The king will 
not suffer, for your hogs and cattle were so 
much larger and fatter than I had antici¬ 
pated that we have all the supplies we can 
well carry. Again, I bid you adieu.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


The easiest route from the Richelieu to 
the English settlements on the lower Con¬ 
necticut would have been over the length of 
Lake Champlain, thence almost directly . 
across the Green Mountains to their des¬ 
tination. The necessity of making a junc¬ 
tion with a band of Abnaki, however, forced 
the adoption of a longer and much more dif¬ 
ficult route: almost due east a hundred 
miles to the Connecticut, then down the 
crooked course of that river a distance twice 
as great. 

During the two days’ journey from 
Montreal to the Richelieu, the order of 
march had been established. The first to 
leave the bivouac was a party of twenty 
Canadians, headed by one of the Rouville 
brothers. These men carried no burdens ex¬ 
cept guns and blankets, and axes. Their 
duty was to cover the day’s march by the 
middle of the afternoon, then to prepare a 

183 


184 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


camp for themselves and the slower-moving 
main body. 

This procedure would, of course, have 
been impossible in the vicinity of an enemy, 
but the mountainous district between the 
Richelieu and the Connecticut was, at that 
day, truly “ No Man’s Land.” Not even 
Indians were to be found in winter in these 
inhospitable wastes, unless it were a wander¬ 
ing band of Algonquins, seeking desperately 
to stave off starvation by hunting and trap¬ 
ping. The camps built were most primitive. 
Two or three bark shelters for the sick, if 
such there were, beds of spruce boughs, and 
an abundance of firewood; such were the 
means by which these hardy men of the 
North combatted the rigors of their winters. 

Following the advance party came the 
Iroquois, fully armed with guns, tomahawks, 
and knives of European manufacture. 
Bows, and weapons of stone were now al¬ 
most never seen among the warriors of the 
Five Nations. Rival traders, English and 
Dutch on one hand, French on the other, 
were only too anxious to supply the savages 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 185 


with the white man’s destructive weapons. 
As the Indians dragged their own pro¬ 
visions, their progress was no more rapid 
than that of the whites who followed. 

For the first day or two after leaving the 
Richelieu, the route led over the flat plains 
bordering that river, and progress was easy, 
but in the mountains, barely ten miles a day 
could be made. Steep, treacherous, snow- 
covered slopes, separated only by narrow, 
brush-filled ravines, made the task of drag¬ 
ging the now heavily-laden sledges almost 
an impossible one. Frequently, the trails 
had to be cut through the brush for almost 
the entire distance traveled in a day, as sur¬ 
veyors now find it necessary to cut lines of 
sight through timbered country. 

Difficult as it was to drag the sledges by 
hand, to abandon them was impossible. The 
expedition would have faced starvation in a 
week, if forced to depend upon hunting. As 
it was, the demand of more than a hundred 
and fifty healthy stomachs, ravenous from 
strenuous toil in almost Arctic cold, cut dan¬ 
gerously deep into the supply of provisions. 


186 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


When, after ten days, the Connecticut was 
reached, less than half of the food supply 
remained. 

Joining the reinforcement of Abnaki on 
the Connecticut, the expedition began the 
descent of that stream, traveling easily over 
the snow-covered ice. Progress might now 
have been rapid, except that the threatened 
failure of provisions made hunting impera¬ 
tive. With customary improvidence, the 
Abnaki allies had brought only supplies 
enough to last until the arrival of the main 
body. In addition, it was impossible to pre¬ 
vent the Indians, both Iroquois and Abnaki, 
from gorging themselves as long as food was 
to be had. The whites might have been put 
on short rations, but such a course with the 
Indians would have disrupted the expedition 
at once. 

At last, toward the end of February, 
signs of civilized occupation began to appear 
along the banks of the river in the form of 
cleared patches of land, now abandoned by 
their owners. On some were charred ruins 
of houses and barns, mute testimonials of 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 187 


the ruthlessly savage warfare that desolated 
the frontier. An abandoned town, North- 
field, on the river bank, offered a night’s 
shelter, but not the food of which the expedi¬ 
tion was now in sore need. 

A half-day’s journey brought the band to 
the mouth of the Deerfield River, flowing 
into the Connecticut from the west. At an¬ 
other half-day’s distance up the stream lay 
the objective, the town of the same name. 
At nightfall, camp was made in the forest, 
at a point within two miles of the village. 

Many an uncomfortable night in the open, 
in driving snowstorm, or the intense cold 
that followed, had been spent by Louis since 
the departure from the Richelieu, but none 
that equaled this. The air, though still, was 
cold with the hard, biting cold of a northern 
winter. That, of itself, he was accustomed 
to, but, on this night, no fires were allowed, 
lest the presence of an enemy should be re¬ 
vealed to the sleeping village. Worse even 
than the lack of heat, was the gnawing hun¬ 
ger in his vitals. 

Three days before, the last of the supplies 


188 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


had been divided, officers, men, and Indian 
allies sharing alike. A scant pound of meat 
and a handful of bread comprised the allot¬ 
ment to each man, this to last until success 
should open the stores of the town, or defeat 
should doom the expedition to death from 
starvation. 

The fatigue of the march brought Louis a 
few hours of fitful sleep, but long before the 
breaking of the late dawn he was awake, 
chilled through and through in the blanket 
which was his only shelter. Fearing lest he 
should actually be frozen if he lay longer, 
he got up, and, still wrapped in his blanket, 
began to pace back and forth beneath the 
leafless trees. Another blanketed form ap¬ 
peared in the dim starlight, then another and 
another until the entire force of whites were 
on their feet, stalking like hooded monks 
among the black tree-trunks. Only the In¬ 
dians, tough as the four-footed denizens of 
the forest, remained asleep. 

As one of these ghostly figures stumbled 
over a half-buried log, an ejaculation re¬ 
vealed it to be the lieutenant, De La Motte. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 189 


Glad to have company in his misery, Louis 
joined his friend. 

“ I am more than half frozen,” the lad 
said, his chattering teeth verifying his words. 
“ Let’s walk back along the track we came 
here on. The snow seems to be hard enough 
to hold us there. Unless I can get some 
blood flowing in my hands and feet, I am 
afraid I shall lose them.” 

For a half-hour the two young men 
walked as briskly as the darkness would 
allow, then, having generated a little warmth 
under their wrappings of blanket, they be¬ 
gan their return at a slower pace. 

Suddenly Louis stopped and turned to his 
companion. “ Tell me, La Motte,” he said, 
“ did those farmers whose burned homes we 
passed yesterday and to-day, ever harm our 
Canadian settlers? ” 

“ Not that I ever heard about,” replied 
the lieutenant. 

“ Have they sent their Indians to murder 
our people and destroy their little homes? ” 
persisted Louis. 

“ I think not,” was the reply. “ In fact, 


190 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


the Indians of this region seem to be on the 
side of the French.” 

“ Then I shall have nothing to do with 
killing them and burning their homes,” re¬ 
plied the lad. “ I will go with the attack¬ 
ing party, for I don’t wish to be thought a 
coward, but I shall not fire a shot unless in 
self-defense, or to help a friend.” 

“ I feel pretty much as you do, Louis,” 
replied La Motte. “ I should have a good 
deal more stomach for the fight if it were 
against the Dutchmen of Albany, who have 
been backing the Iroquois against us for a 
hundred years. But, of course, as an officer, 
I must lead my men in the attack. And in 
your case, while we may not need your help 
in fighting, for we probably outnumber the 
English four to one, I would suggest that 
you keep with the main body. In spite of 
all the fine things said about our Christian 
Indian allies, I know and you know that 
they are still savages. It may be that, if you 
are at hand, you may be able to help us 
few officers to restrain somewhat their 
savagery.” 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 191 


“ I shall be glad to do it,” said Louis with 
a feeling of relief. In fact, the expedition in 
which he was engaged was becoming less and 
less to his liking. He could not help think¬ 
ing that he and his associates were now play¬ 
ing toward the English settlers the detest¬ 
able part which the Iroquois had played to¬ 
ward his own kin on the Richelieu. But if 
he should incur the dangers of the assault, 
not to destroy but to save,—the knight er¬ 
rantry that is in every boy responded to the 
appeal of such a part. 


CHAPTER XVII 


An hour before dawn, word came to form 
for the attack. Snow-shoes were to be left 
behind. Alternate thawing and freezing had 
formed a crust on the three-foot depth of 
snow, sufficient to hold a man’s weight with¬ 
out them. Packs, too, were left at the camp. 
Carrying only their rifles, the hardy war¬ 
riors, white and red, moved swiftly forward 
through the forest and over the bare fields. 

This was the kind of warfare to which the 
redmen, and to a scarcely less degree their 
white allies, had been born and bred. The 
rigorous discipline of custom, more rigid 
than that of a martinet, held them to a 
silence almost absolute. From the swiftly- 
moving mass not a sound came to betray 
their approach even to the watch-dogs of the 
town, save only the soft crunching of frozen 
snow beneath deerskin moccasins. Even 
this was varied by intervals of silence 
through occasional halts, that a wakeful sen- 

192 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 193 


tinel might confuse it with the breathing of 
the night air through the pines. So, like a 
procession of vengeful ghosts, the attackers 
moved through the gray quarter-light upon 
their prey. 

Little danger was there that the approach 
of the French and Indians would be de¬ 
tected. True, rumors had come to the Eng¬ 
lish of a threatened attack upon the Con¬ 
necticut settlements, and a little force of 
twenty volunteers—farm-boys, not soldiers 
—had been sent from the older settlements 
to Deerfield. 

Before winter had supposedly made im¬ 
possible a descent from the distant Cana¬ 
dian settlements, many families had found 
refuge within the palisade that enclosed a 
dozen or more houses in the center of the 
town. But now that the rivers were frozen, 
and the forest trails deep with snow, con¬ 
fidence had come that the attack, if made, 
would be postponed until spring at least. 
Families had returned to their homes, and 
the discipline of the garrison, never rigid, 
had almost vanished. Now, as their as- 


194 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


sailants swept silently over the snow-covered 
meadows toward the doomed town, citizens 
and soldiers slept, all unconscious of dan¬ 
ger, in their warm feather-beds. 

Louis, rifle in mittened hand, walked with 
La Motte at the head of the score of Cana¬ 
dians of whom the lieutenant was in com¬ 
mand. As he emerged upon the meadows, 
his eyes, though accustomed to the deeper 
gloom of the forest, could distinguish little 
save the great bulk of Sugar Loaf, looming 
black against a drab eastern sky. As the 
party advanced, however, the sky grew 
brighter, objects began to take form on and 
beyond the meadows; gaunt, ragged forms 
of deadened trees, and haystacks, white with 
their covering of snow. Then the large 
wooden houses of the town appeared, 
stretching in a long double row along a 
single street. 

Silently, the assailants moved past the 
most northerly structures. Their object was 
to gain possession, by surprise, of the palis¬ 
ade that surrounded an area of perhaps four 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 195 

city squares in the heart of the town. This 
was done with ridiculous ease. Recent heavy 
snows, drifted almost to the top of the eight- 
foot wooden wall, had not been removed. 
The palisade hardly checked the speed of the 
attack. 

Now that silence was no longer necessary, 
the horrible war-cry broke from a hundred 
Indian throats, and a rush was made for the 
doors of the houses. Most of these gave 
way, leaving the occupants of the houses to 
the scant mercy of their foes. In the heat 
of the attack, many lives were sacrificed, but 
the object of the raid was prisoners, not 
blood, for prisoners meant ransom money. 
But resistance or attempted flight brought 
death. 

Not all the houses, however, were entered 
without resistance. As Louis stood near the 
palisade which he had climbed, he saw a 
group of eight or ten Indians hacking at the 
stout oaken door of a large, near-by house. 1 

1 In a museum at Deerfield, the door of this house, cut 
through by the hatchets of the Indians, can still be seen. 
One of the large houses passed by the assailants of the 
town, as they rushed toward the palisade, is still standing. 


196 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


At length a hole, as large as a man’s head, 
was made in it. Shots through the opening 
were followed by screams of women. Then, 
having unbarred the door, the Indians 
rushed in. 

Helpless to interfere, Louis had started 
to move away when he heard the quick pat¬ 
ter of a child’s bare feet on the frozen snow. 
Turning, he saw a little flaxen-haired girl 
of six, clad only in a white woolen night¬ 
gown, speeding toward him from the rear 
of the house. No cry came from her white 
lips, but the terrified stare of her blue eyes 
was more eloquent than shrieks or moans. 
An instant later, the powerful form of an 
Iroquois followed her from behind the house. 
No second glance was required for Louis to 
recognize the hideous, scarred countenance 
of Fighting Wolf, and no second glance at 
the Mohawk’s face and at the bloody toma¬ 
hawk in his hand was needed to show that 
the little girl fled from death, not captivity. 

The child reached the lad’s side, and, al¬ 
most convulsed with terror, clung to his gar¬ 
ments. Instinctively, Louis threw his rifle 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 197 


to the ready. At the threat the Indian 
stopped running, but continued his advance 
at a walk. 

“ Stop! ” he lad shouted. He had no in¬ 
tention of letting the powerful savage get 
to close quarters with him. 

Fighting Wolf obeyed the command, for 
the tone in which it was given showed the 
speaker to be in earnest, and no Indian, 
however brave, cared to face the threat of a 
cocked rifle. The look on the Mohawk’s face 
showed, however, that but for the fact that 
Louis had “ the drop ” on him, the toma¬ 
hawk might have found another victim than 
the helpless child. 

The Indian spoke, using the little French 
he had been able to acquire. 

“ Girl mine,” he said. “ My prisoner. I 
take away.” Then, as an afterthought, he 
added, “ Me not hurt her.” 

For an instant, Louis pondered the chief’s 
words. He realized that interference with 
the undisputed right of an Indian ally to a 
prisoner he had taken, might have serious 
consequences, especially when that ally was 


198 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


so important a person as Fighting Wolf. 
It was entirely possible, too, that the Mo¬ 
hawk really meant no harm to the child, that 
she would be carried with other prisoners to 
Canada and there held for ransom. Louis 
opened his mouth to parley further, but the 
look of hatred and vengeance he encountered 
as he looked again at the Indian’s face made 
him close it with a snap. 

“ The girl is my prisoner, not yours,” he 
said finally. “ I have her under my hand, 
while you simply chased her. She is mine, 
and I shall protect her.” 

Louis almost quailed before the flame of 
bitter hatred that flashed across the Indian’s 
face. Then, quick as a steel spring, the 
bloody tomahawk was raised and sent fly¬ 
ing at the head of the child. 

“ Fighting Wolf no want prisoner,” the 
Mohawk cried, this time truthfully. 
“ Fighting Wolf fight for scalps and to kill, 
not for money.” 

By a quick parry with his gun-barrel, 
Louis luckily deflected the keen little axe, 
and it buried itself harmlessly in the snow. 



“Stop! “ the lad shouted.— Page 197. 




















































ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 199 


With another hideous grimace of hatred, 
Fighting Wolf walked away to resume his 
murderous work against the helpless vil¬ 
lagers. Louis picked up the trembling child 
and carried her into the house. 

The intensity of the attack was now wan¬ 
ing. No attempt was made to disturb the 
southern part of the town where a palisaded 
house, the home of the militia commander, 
gave promise of a stiff resistance. Within 
the main palisade, all the houses had been 
entered except one. Here barricaded win¬ 
dows, bullet-proof walls, and a handful of 
resolute defenders had served to discourage 
the assailants, and they had sought easier 
conquests. 

Bands of Indians now began to bring in 
their booty of prisoners: men, women, and 
children. Some were fully dressed; most 
shivered in their night clothing. All were 
bound with the small ropes that had been 
brought from Canada in anticipation of just 
such use. Altogether, more than a hundred 
of the three hundred inhabitants of the little 
town were captured. 


200 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The villagers had paid heavily for their 
Indian-like failure to guard against a sur¬ 
prise attack, but their assailants had not 
come off scathless. A score of still forms on 
the snow, among them two or three French¬ 
men, told how well the English had fought 
when they had a chance. More to be pitied 
than the dead were the scores of wounded, 
Rouville, the leader, among them. Without 
shelter, without medical supplies, they must 
face a month’s journey through the wintry 
wastes, back to their Canadian homes. 

Fearing an attack by forces from the vil¬ 
lages to the south, the French and their allies 
hastened their preparations for departure. 
Cattle and hogs were shot and hastily 
butchered. Flour from the houses, maize 
and wheat from cribs and granaries, to¬ 
gether with the fresh meat, were hastily 
packed for carrying. Clothing and blankets 
seized in the various houses were distributed 
among the prisoners to prevent them from 
freezing. 

The winter sun, giving light but little 
heat, was barely an hour high above the tree- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 201 


tops when the greater part of the French 
and Indians started on their return journey. 
There was little in their appearance to sug¬ 
gest a victorious band. A quarter of the 
number wore bandages. A score hobbled 
painfully over the hard surface of the snow. 
These were the “ walking wounded.” A 
dozen more, harder hit, had been placed in 
an ox-sled and were being dragged by as 
many of their more fortunate comrades. 

Scattered among the French and Indians, 
each under the charge of his captor and 
owner, were the English prisoners. Now 
that the heat of the attack was past, they 
were in little danger, as long as they were 
able to keep up with their captors. 

It was well that the French and their 
allies had not delayed their departure, unless 
they desired to engage in a fruitless fight. 
As it was, stragglers who had remained 
behind to plunder were attacked by the in¬ 
furiated English, reinforced from neighbor¬ 
ing towns, and driven pell-mell across the 
meadows toward their friends. 


202 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


When Louis carried the little English girl 
into the house from which she had escaped, 
he found there half a dozen women and chil¬ 
dren, already prisoners of the Indians. At 
his request, one of the women was allowed to 
dress the child. Warm clothing, a coat and 
cap of beaver-fur, knitted woolen mittens, 
fur-lined moccasins, and, lastly, a heavy 
blanket; with these Louis felt that even so>* 
young a child was well prepared for the long 
journey that lay ahead of her. 

The thought occurred to the lad to set the 
girl free, but he rejected it at once. Al¬ 
though the main body of his companions was 
about to begin its retreat, plunderers still 
roamed through the town, and frequent 
shrieks of women and children told how lust 
for slaughter overcame, in Indian hearts, the 
desire for gain. Then, too, as long as Fight¬ 
ing Wolf was in the town, there could be no 
safety for the child. Louis must take her 
with him. 

As soon as the girl was ready, she and 
Louis joined the band that was already leav¬ 
ing the town. Recent days of semi-starva- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 203 


tion reminded the lad that he must now see 
that two stomachs were kept reasonably full. 
There was but one source of supply, the 
booty that had been collected. The lad was 
fortunate in securing two large hams and 
perhaps thirty pounds of flour. So, with the 
hams tied together and dangling like saddle¬ 
bags from his neck, the flour in a bag under 
one arm, his rifle under the other, and his 
little prisoner hanging to the tail of his deer¬ 
skin tunic, the boy began his homeward 
march. 

Attempts on Louis’ part to converse with 
his companion were a failure. He did learn 
that her first name was Mercy, but, beyond 
that he could not go, for he knew no 
English. In fact, his attempts to make the 
child understand the French names of fa¬ 
miliar objects awakened only wonderment in 
her mind that a white person should be so 
silly as not to call things by their well-known 
English names. She had seen Indians, of 
course, who did not know such names, but 
how one could be a white person, and almost 
grown up, and not know that snow was 


204 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

snow, and that a coat was a coat, was a thing 
beyond comprehension. But then, he had a 
kind face, and he had made that terrible 
Indian who chased her let her alone, so she 
didn’t mind if he hadn’t yet really learned to 
talk. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Camp was made on the first night of the 
return journey, nearly twenty miles up the 
Connecticut. The sharp reaction of the 
English after the first surprise was past, and 
the arrival of reinforcements from other 
towns, were sufficient to indicate the danger 
to the French of remaining near the scene of 
the morning's battle. With the wounded 
and the newly-acquired stock of provisions 
on their sledges, progress had been rapid 
over the hard snow-crust. 

Louis had provided a seat for Mercy on 
the sledge which he himself helped to pull. 
As the spirits of the child rose in reaction 
after the terrible events of the morning, she 
began to look upon the journey as some¬ 
thing of a holiday outing. Child-like, she 
even»played that the four hard-working men 
who tugged at the sledge’s trace were her 
horses, and the rough sledge a luxurious gilt- 
trimmed sleigh. 


205 


206 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


To the other prisoners, however, especially 
to those whose masters were Indians, the day 
was anything but a holiday. The old and 
the feeble, the sick, the little children; all 
must keep up the killing pace set by the 
French leaders. When a captive lagged, a 
significant gesture on the part of his captor 
toward the ever-ready tomahawk spurred 
him on. The Indians did not desire to lose 
any of their prisoners, for ransoms were 
high, but if the captive could not reach Can¬ 
ada where he could be sold,—well, scalps 
also had a money value. 

The camping place was on a deserted 
farm. The farmhouse itself, which some¬ 
how had escaped the torch of the raiders who 
had driven out or killed the occupants, was 
given over to the badly wounded. The rest 
found shelter, as best they might, under the 
pines. Great fires, fed by dead trees from 
the partly-cleared fields, gave light for the 
construction of rude shelters and beds of 
pine-boughs. This work done, a meager 
dinner was eaten. Though there was abun¬ 
dance of food for the present, the experience 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 207 


of the past weeks had impressed even the 
Indians with the necessity of spreading the 
supply over as many meals as possible. 

Louis and his little prisoner had just 
begun to eat when they were joined by the 
lieutenant, De La Motte. The two friends 
had not seen each other since the beginning 
of the morning’s conflict. The officer, who 
carried his dinner in his hand, sat down be¬ 
side Louis, and without a word devoured the 
small piece of broiled ham, and the even 
smaller fragment of bread which constituted 
his meal. Louis, thankful that his own din¬ 
ner was not interrupted, did likewise. In 
fact, both the young men were so hungry 
from their long period of semi-fasting, and 
from the driving march in the cold, that for 
the moment nothing much seemed of impor¬ 
tance except to get food into their empty 
stomachs. To his surprise, Louis found his 
teeth snapping through the tender meat like 
the jaws of an angry wolf. In two minutes 
the food was gone, to the smallest crumb of 
bread and the last taste of grease that could 
be sucked from his fingers. 


208 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ I want more dinner,” said Louis, when 
he had swallowed the last morsel. 

“ So do I,” answered La Motte. “ I am so 
hungry that I am tempted to eat my leather 
belt. It would, at least, taste something like 
food. But if I eat more to-day, I shall be 
even hungrier to-morrow, for I shall have no 
dinner at all. Now, let’s forget about it. 
Any hurts from the Yankees’ bullets? ” 

“ No,” answered Louis. “ I didn’t get 
into the fighting. How about you? ” 

“ Just a graze in my left side,” answered 
the lieutenant. “ One of the English women 
dressed it for me, and it is very comfortable. 
The same woman nursed one of our officers 
who is really badly hurt. I call that a Chris¬ 
tian act, even if the woman is a heretic, for I 
was told that her husband, her son, and a 
grandson had all been killed in the attack on 
the town. I understand our leader gave 
orders that she should be left behind with her 
friends, and as I have not seen her on the 
march, that was probably done. But how 
about this little lady? Did you decide to do 
some capturing of your own, after all? ” 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 209 

Louis told the lieutenant of his rescue of 
the child from death at the hand of Fighting 
Wolf. As he listened, La Motte looked as 
grave as was possible for him. 

“ Blocking a chief like Fighting Wolf, 
even in such a villainous act, may prove 
serious,” he said. “ I have been among these 
Caughnawaga Iroquois enough to know that 
they are like spoiled children. The English 
and we French have been bidding against 
each other so long for their friendship, that 
they have a most exalted idea of their own 
value.” 

The conversation was interrupted by the 
approach of one of the English prisoners, a 
tall, muscular man in the attire of a New 
England preacher: black coat and knee 
trousers, black hat and woolen stockings. 
On seeing him, Mercy sprang to her feet, 
and, spreading the skirt of her little coat, 
courtesied. The stranger acknowledged the 
salutation with a pat on the head. 

“ I am sorry to see you here, Mercy,” he 
said. “ But do you know this farm where 
we are camped? ” 


210 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ I know,” replied the child, a look of 
wonderment in her eyes. “It is my home, 
where I lived once with my papa and mam¬ 
ma. But where are Papa and Mamma? ” 
“You will see them sometime, Mercy, 
dear,” replied the minister, his eyes moisten¬ 
ing. 

The man then addressed Louis and La 
Motte, speaking fair French. 

“ My name is Williams, John Williams,” 
he said. “ I am, or was, the minister in 
Deerfield. May I ask whether you have this 
child in your possession? ” 

Louis repeated the story he had just told 
La Motte of the rescue of the little girl. 

“ According to the rules of frontier war¬ 
fare,” he concluded, “ the girl is my prisoner, 
and I intend to hold possession of her until 
she is restored to her relatives, or is other¬ 
wise safely disposed of.” 

“ Thank God she, at least, is not in the 
hands of the savages,” said the minister. “ I 
would I could say the same about my own 
children. Two were slain in my home, five 
are prisoners of the Indians. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 211 


“ Regarding little Mercy Hapgood,” he 
continued, “ it is not likely that relatives will 
search for her. As she has just said, though 
you may not have understood, the farm 
where we are camped is her old home. Here 
lived James Hapgood with his wife and six 
children. Mercy was next to the youngest. 
Two years ago next summer, the house was 
attacked by a band of your French Indians, 
as hundreds of others have been. The entire 
family was killed except little Mercy, then 
barely five years old. In the confusion of 
the attack, she crawled under a bed in a dark 
corner and was not found by the Indians. 
Fortunately the house was not burned, and 
the next day we found her, still under the 
bed, white, trembling, speechless with terror, 
but unharmed. Since then she has been the 
guest of Deerfield, where she has been wel¬ 
comed in turn at every fireside.” 

“ Since no relatives have claimed the girl 
in these two years,” Louis said, “ I suppose 
there is little likelihood that any would 
seek her in Canada. In that case, I shall try 
to arrange for her adoption into a good 


212 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


family, or to have her admitted to a convent 
school.” 

Williams was a Puritan. Tender and af¬ 
fectionate in his attitude toward individuals, 
he was as hardened steel in matters affecting 
his religious convictions. While speaking of 
little Mercy, his face was gentle as that of a 
child, but at the mention of a convent school 
his jaw set, and hard, deep lines appeared 
about his lips and eyes. 

“ A convent,” he said, and his voice was 
hard as he repeated the, to him, hated word. 
“ As God is my witness, I had rather your 
gun-barrel had not deflected the hatchet of 
the Iroquois, and that Mercy had gone in¬ 
nocent to her Maker, than that she should 
have been spared only to become a nun.” 

“ Come, come, my good sir,” interposed 
La Motte. “ Our convent schools are not as 
bad as all that. They are full of girls as 
sweet and innocent as your little friend here, 
and the sisters in charge are as full of real 
charity as the good woman in Deerfield who 
dressed my wound this morning. AVhy, my 
dear sir,” the lieutenant continued whimsi- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 213 


cally, “ you will not have been a year in Can¬ 
ada before you will be a robed and shaven 
priest yourself/’ 

If the minister’s face had been hard 
before, it now became as adamant. 

“ It ill behooves one to boast before the 
test,” he said, “ but if I know my own heart, 
no torture that even these hell-hounds, your 
French Indians, could invent could force me 
to that step. Aye, if I thought my tongue 
would ever speak the word of consent, I 
would at this moment tear it from my 
mouth.” 

La Motte was somewhat taken aback by 
the effect of his jest upon the Puritan. 

“ We have no intention of burning you at 
the stake to convert you to our way of think¬ 
ing,” he said. “We have a problem before 
us that to my mind is much more serious: to 
get these scores of prisoners safely to Can¬ 
ada. If they were captives of the French 
only, there would be little difficulty, except 
for the hardships of the journey. But how 
can we persuade these wild Indians to act 
like human beings? ” 


214 ESCAPING THE MOITAWKS 


At the mention of the prisoners, Williams’ 
face softened again. 

“ May the God of us all give you wis¬ 
dom,” he said. “ As for me, I am now only 
a helpless slave to my two Indian masters.” 

At this moment a French soldier brought 
word to Louis that the commander, De Rou- 
ville, desired to see him. 

“ It may be in connection with Fighting 
Wolf,” La Motte said. “ If you wish, I will 
go with you.” 

“I wish you would,” answered Louis. 
“ And I shall take Mercy also. I am afraid 
to let her be out of my sight for a minute 
until this matter is settled.” 

De Rouville was found sitting before a 
fire with his back against the trunk of a pine. 
His white face and a bandaged arm told of 
the wound he had received in the battle. 
Seated around the fire were a number of 
other officers. Outside the circle stood the 
tall, erect form of Fighting Wolf. When 
Louis met the fierce glance of the Mohawk’s 
eye, he had no doubt regarding the reason 
for his summons. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 215 


De Rouville lost no time in preliminaries. 

“ Monsieur Dupuy,” he said, “ our ally, 
Fighting Wolf, says that you took from 
him, and are now holding, an English girl 
whom he had captured. He says he de¬ 
manded her return and that you refused to 
give her up. What have you to say? ” 

“ I have the girl in my possession,” re¬ 
plied Louis. “ That is true, and here she is.” 

All eyes turned to the face of the child, 
which, at the sight of Fighting Wolf, had 
again gone white. 

“ It is also true,” Louis continued, “ that 
I refused to give her up to the Iroquois. It 
is not true that I took her from him. She 
was fleeing from his murderous tomahawk 
when she saw me, and ran to me for pro¬ 
tection.” 

“ Fighting Wolf’s story is the same as 
yours,” said the leader, “ but he says that, 
before you saw the girl, he had captured her 
and some others, and that while he was bind¬ 
ing the other prisoners, she darted out of the 
house. Do you know this to be untrue? ” 

Louis stood silent. He did not doubt 


216 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

that the story of the Mohawk chief was a lie, 
but of himself he had no way of proving it 
to be such. But Mercy could he her own 
witness. 

“ I have no means of knowing what went 
on in the house,” he said finally. “ Let the 
little girl speak for herself.” 

“Does she speak French?” asked De 
Rouville. 

“ No,” Louis said, “ but there is a minister 
among the captives who does. I will bring 
him.” 

In a few minutes the lad returned with 
Williams, and, through him, Mercy told her 
story. 

“ I was staying in Goodman Sheldon’s 
house,” she said. “ I had been living with 
him for two or three weeks. I slept in a 
trundle-bed in the big room down-stairs. 
This morning—it was this morning, wasn’t 
it?—it seems so long ago. This morning I 
heard shots, and some terrible yelling. I 
knew it was Indians, for it sounded just as 
it did that other time when the Indians came 
to our house. I think they must have taken 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 217 


Papa and Mamma away then, for I haven’t 
seen them since. Anyway, I was sure it was 
Indians, so I hid behind the trundle-bed 
under the big bed, just as I did before. 

“ Pretty soon I heard a sound like 
hatchets chopping at the front door. Then 
I saw the sky through a little hole in the 
door. The hole got bigger, and I saw an 
Indian’s head. Then some one reached 
through the hole and unbarred the door, and 
the Indians came in. Some of them opened 
the back door, and other Indians came in 
that way. With the doors open, it wasn’t 
dark where I was, so when I thought no one 
was watching, I slipped out from under 
the bed and ran for the back door. This 
Indian,” she pointed at the Wolf, “ saw me 
and chased me, but I got outdoors. Then I 
saw this man,” and she touched Louis’ sleeve, 
“ and he made the Indian stop.” 

The child told her story with a simplicity 
and directness that carried conviction of its 
truth even through the medium of an inter¬ 
preter. Fighting Wolf sensed the effect 
upon the French officers. 


218 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

“ Girl tell lie! ” he shouted angrily. “ I 
take girl prisoner; then when I tie other 
prisoners, she run away.” 

De Rouville made no answer, but turned 
to his brother officers. 

“ It is a question of which story is true,” 
he said, “ that of this little girl, or that of 
Fighting Wolf. For myself, I believe the 
girl is telling the truth, and the Mohawk 
lying, but there is no proof one way or the 
other. It might be good policy to let Fight¬ 
ing Wolf have the girl, and so save all pos¬ 
sibility of trouble, but if I decide he is lying 
to get her, I shall block him. I will not give 
that child up to be murdered, as I believe 
she would be, unless he can prove that she is 
his by the rules of our warfare. Will you 
back me in this stand? ” 

There was a general murmur of agree¬ 
ment. 

“May I ask the plaintiff in this trial a 
question? ” asked La Motte. 

The request was granted. 

“You say you were busy binding your 
other prisoners when the girl ran away from 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 219 


you,” he said to the Mohawk. “ Where are 
your other prisoners? I did not see any with 
you on the march. Produce your prisoners, 
that we may hear their story.” 

The face of Fighting Wolf changed. 
Like many another liar, he had not thought 
his story through to the end and was 
trapped, for, true to his boast, he had taken 
scalps, not prisoners. He realized that his 
case was lost. With a glare of hatred that 
encompassed the whole group, but dwelt 
with particular malevolence upon Louis and 
La Motte, he turned and strode away to his 
own band. 

u We have made an enemy of the Wolf,” 
said De Rouville, when the tall form of the 
Mohawk had disappeared among the trees. 
“ We shall all need to be on the lookout for 
treachery. Especially, La Motte, must you 
and your friend be on your guard, not only 
for the sake of this child, but for your own, 
for if I know Indian nature, the Mohawk 
will try to wreak his vengeance upon all 
three of you.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


For a week or more after the attack upon 
Deerfield, the returning war-party main¬ 
tained the fast pace it had set on the first 
day’s march. There was need for speed. 
Always there was the threat of hunger even 
to starvation to spur lagging feet. Then 
there was the possibility that, at any time, 
an early thaw would break up their best 
road, the frozen surface of the river. Day 
by day the heat from the climbing sun in¬ 
creased, and, frequently, snow-shoes were 
left off, and the party marched ankle-deep in 
water and slush that covered the ice of the 
river. 

The hardships of the march under these 
conditions were severe. Without exception, 
the French and Indians wore moccasins of 
deerskin. This soft leather, which when dry 
was remarkably tough and durable, was of 
little value when water-soaked. Feet were, 
of course, so chilled in the icy water as to be 
numb to all feeling, even from the frequent 

220 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 221 


cuts and bruises due to jagged fragments of 
ice piercing worn-out moccasins. 

Even the blazing camp-fires failed to re¬ 
store the marchers to their wonted cheerful¬ 
ness. The chill was indeed taken out of 
numb feet, but it was followed by aches and 
burnings equally as painful. In addition, 
there was the incessant gnawing of unsatis¬ 
fied hunger that made men irritable even 
toward their best friends. Under such cir¬ 
cumstances, as soon as camp had been made, 
food was prepared and was eaten while wet 
feet and clothing were drying. Moccasins 
were patched, or replaced with wrappings of 
cloth or skins, preparatory for the next day’s 
journey. Then the weary travelers forgot 
their hunger and pain in sleep. 

If the swift march tried almost to the 
limit the endurance of hardened Indians and 
frontiersmen, the effect upon the captive 
women and children may best be imagined. 
Day by day, their number decreased. Utter 
exhaustion, a fall on the slippery ice of the 
river, failure to respond to the command to 
push on, a swift but merciful blow of a tom- 


222 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


ahawk; such was the tale whispered nightly 
among the miserable captives to account for 
the absence of a relative or neighbor. 

In addition to his share of the hardships of 
the march, Louis carried the responsibility 
of protecting his little charge against harm 
at the hands of Fighting Wolf. For him to 
guard her day and night was impossible. 
La Motte offered to share in the task, but, 
even so, the burden was too great. 

“ I must try to get another person to 
share the watching with us, La Motte,” he 
said, after he and the lieutenant had each sat 
awake half the night to guard against a 
treacherous attack. “ What with the fatigue 
of the march and the warmth of the fire, I 
just couldn’t keep awake last night. Half 
a dozen times I caught myself nodding, and 
I might as well be asleep as in that condition, 
for all the good I should do as a sentinel. I 
shall look up Baptiste Perrot, a tenant of 
Margaret’s father. It may be I can hire him 
to share the watch with us.” 

During the noon rest on that day, Louis 
found the peasant farmer. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 223 


“ I will do as you ask for fifty livres, paid 
in advance,” Perrot said, when the request 
for his help was made. 

Louis was somewhat surprised that, under 
the circumstances, the man, himself a father, 
should drive so hard a bargain, but he con¬ 
sented to the terms and paid the money. 

“ That seems a pretty big price to ask a 
neighbor for sitting up a third of the night 
for a few weeks, doesn’t it? ” Perrot said. 

Louis made no answer, and the peasant 
continued. 

“ I have need for the money. Near me on 
the march to-day was an Abnaki Indian who 
has as a prisoner a little boy, only four years 
old. I was told his father was killed at 
Deerfield. His mother gave out on the 
march to-day. You know what that meant. 
So the little chap is now an orphan. The 
Indian has no sledge, and he soon got tired 
of carrying the child, who naturally could 
not walk fast enough or far enough to keep 
up with the party. He was offered to me 
for fifty livres, but, of course, I did not have 
the money. I got the Abnaki to let me carry 


224 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


the boy. I should be glad to continue to do 
so, but the Indian will soon be going off to 
the east to Acadia. I am afraid the boy 
would not last long after that. Now I shall 
buy him, and make him one of my own 
family.” 

“You have a good many children of your 
own already, haven’t you? ” asked Louis. 
“Will it not be a burden to support 
another? ” 

“ I have only fourteen,” said Perrot, “ and 
as four of them are old enough to help on 
the farm, we get along very nicely. No, the 
boy will not be a burden, and I will bring 
him up to be a good subject of our French 
king.” 

Before the afternoon start was made, La 
Motte had obtained permission for Perrot to 
accompany him and Louis for the rest of the 
trip back to the Richelieu. In fact, the man 
was made a kind of orderly to the lieutenant, 
and thus was relieved of the usual duties as 
scout and sentinel. 

A sledge was now assigned to the especial 
use of Louis and La Motte. On it were 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 225 


placed the personal effects of the two, to¬ 
gether with Perrot’s pack, and a proper 
share of the supply of provisions. In the 
midst of the bundles, warmly wrapped in 
blankets, sat the two children. 

Charley, the boy was called, and as 
Charles was as good a French name as it was 
English, Charley he remained. Like Mercy, 
he was a fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked child. 
He was too young for the terrible events of 
the past days to have done more than fill his 
mind with wonderment. The tragedy of the 
strange happenings was lost upon him. 

Perrot and Louis were the team that for 
the most part drew the sledge, with La Motte 
helping as often as his duties would permit. 
A light rope, thirty feet long, the ends tied 
to the fronts of the two runners, served as 
traces. In the bight of the rope, fifteen feet 
from the sledge, was Louis’ place. The line 
was passed over the back of his neck and 
under his armpits, in the way known to all 
boys who own sleds. A cross-line between 
the traces, ten feet from the sledge, provided 
the same simple but efficient kind of harness 


226 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


for Perrot. And so, yoked together by a 
common humanity, the proud young noble 
and the sturdy peasant dragged their living 
load through the slush and over the jagged 
ice of the Connecticut. 

De Rouville, the commander of the expe¬ 
dition, was a man thoroughly versed in the 
ways of the woods and its inhabitants. To 
that fact, he owed his command. To such a 
man there would be no uncertainty regard¬ 
ing the frailty of the bonds that held his 
Iroquois allies to the French cause. The 
hatreds of a hundred years of hostility had 
been temporarily overcome by the blandish¬ 
ments of French emissaries and the offer of 
material advantages. But the Iroquois of 
Caughnawaga were never out of touch with 
their brothers on the Mohawk, and they well 
knew that the latch-strings of their former 
English allies were always out. Nor would 
their welcome be less warm if, in returning 
to their former home, they brought with 
them a goodly number of French scalps. 

When told of the arrangements for safe¬ 
guarding Mercy against the vengeance of 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 227 


Fighting Wolf, De Rouville saw in them a 
means of dealing with the threat of treach¬ 
ery that might endanger his whole white 
force. Knowing the point where the blow, if 
struck, would surely come, the problem of 
warding it off was simplified. 

Twenty-five men, Canadians accustomed 
to the emergencies of frontier warfare, were 
assigned to the task of guarding the little 
English girl and her two friends. By day, 
they were to march in a ring surrounding 
the sledge in which Mercy rode. At night, 
their bivouac was to be about hers. 

After some two weeks of travel, a large 
stream was seen, White River, breaking 
through the mountains to the west and flow¬ 
ing into the Connecticut. Though there 
were still several hours of daylight, camp 
was made, for here the expedition was to 
begin to break up. 

The provisions were practically ex¬ 
hausted. From now on, food must be se¬ 
cured by hunting, and hunting by a number 
of small bands would be far more effective 
than by one large company. Part, at least, 


228 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

of the Iroquois were to ascend the valley of 
the White River toward Lake Champlain. 
The French and the Abnaki were to con¬ 
tinue up the Connecticut, dispersing, how¬ 
ever, in small parties. 

In the bustle of making camp, Louis 
found himself for a moment beside the com¬ 
mander, De Rouville. 

“ To-night is a critical night for you and 
your charge, perhaps for us all,” said the of¬ 
ficer. He then told of the arrangements for 
breaking up the allied force. 

“ Fighting Wolf has delayed his blow,” 
De Rouville continued. “ It may be, he will 
not strike, for he must have observed the 
precautions we have taken. Or it may be, 
he has waited to reach this tributary of the 
Connecticut so as to have available a direct 
line of retreat to his old home bevond Lac 
St. Sacrement,” as the French called Lake 
George. “ In any case, he must have 
planned the blow to come to-night, if at all, 
for to-morrow his path and ours separate. 
But do not worry. I think I have a little 
surprise in store for Fighting Wolf.” 


CHAPTER XX 


The delay on the part of Fighting Wolf, 
in seeking revenge for the grievances which 
he fancied he had suffered, was not due to 
any lessening of the bitterness which he 
nursed in his heart. On the contrary, his 
savage wrath had grown from day to day 
until it encompassed all things French. It 
would now be satisfied only with the destruc¬ 
tion of the entire band of Frenchmen. 

This widening of Fighting Wolf’s enmity 
gave Louis and his charge at least tempo¬ 
rary security. Had the Mohawk so desired, 
no precautions could have prevented him 
and his immediate followers from bringing 
about their destruction, either on the march 
or in the darkness of the bivouac. But such 
an attack must have been followed by im¬ 
mediate flight to the woods, and Fighting 
Wolf’s plans for a revenge of a wider scope 
would have been frustrated. 

The chieftain was of a nation of politi- 

229 


230 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


cians. In the rude statecraft of the wooded 
wilderness, no other Indian people could 
match the Iroquois. Astute policy, even 
more than hard fighting, had made the Five 
Nations dread masters from the rock-bound 
coast of New England to the wooded shores 
of Lake Michigan. Along with the savage 
ferocity of his people, Fighting Wolf had 
inherited, also, their shrewdness. In battle 
or in council, he was equally formidable. 

The Mohawk’s first step was to make sure 
of his own followers, the score of warriors 
who had selected him as their chief for the 
expedition. Here, he experienced no diffi¬ 
culty. Such was the ascendancy of his 
strong, aggressive character over these men 
that, without exception, they agreed to cast 
their lot with him. 

With the remainder of the Iroquois, the 
task was less easy. Here, the Wolf en¬ 
countered the envy and jealousy of rival 
chieftains, as well as the inertia that tends to 
withstand all suggestion of change. But, 
day by day, through reminders of their in¬ 
herited hostility for the French, of fancied 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 281 


personal grievances, and, above all, of the 
cheapness and abundance of the goods of 
English and Dutch traders on the Mohawk, 
the loyalty of his fellow-tribesmen to the 
Great White Father was undermined and 
threatened with collapse. 

The efforts of Fighting Wolf were not 
confined to those of his own tribe and nation. 
To make certain the success of his schemes, 
he desired the assured neutrality, if not the 
active assistance, of the band of Abnaki, 
equal to the Iroquois of the expedition in 
numbers, if not in fighting quality. But 
here the Mohawk met racial hatred, even 
more pronounced than that of his own 
people for the French. 

For generations the Abnaki, together with 
all their Algonquin cousins, had trembled 
under the tyranny of the Five Nations, but, 
with the growth of the power of the French, 
to whom they looked as protectors, had come 
some degree of security against the exac¬ 
tions of their harsh masters. The Abnaki 
were willing to work with the Iroquois under 
French leadership, though it was like asking 


232 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


the fox to live in the same kennel with the 
hounds; but to turn against their white pro¬ 
tectors, or to leave them to the wrath of the 
Iroquois, their own oppressors,—the answer 
was so decisive that the Wolf saw that he 
must reckon on the Abnaki as active en¬ 
emies. 

Meantime, the French leader was not 
asleep. Through the Abnaki, and half a 
dozen Iroquois who had withstood the wiles 
of the Wolf, he was kept apprized of the 
progress of the latter’s scheme. Enlisting 
the services of a dozen frontiersmen, well 
versed in the working of the Indian mind, 
he proceeded to block the plans of the 
Mohawk. 

In the first place, the loyalty of the 
Abnaki was made doubly sure, and their ef- 
fectiveness increased, by gifts of ammunition 
and guns. To this very practical measure, 
were added liberal promises of future gifts 
and honors. 

Promises were resorted to, also, as well as 
fiery denunciations of their former English 
friends, in dealing with the three or four- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 233 


score Iroquois who were not of the Wolf’s 
band. Most effective, however, were 
scarcely veiled threats that their friends and 
relatives in the town of Caughnawaga would 
be considered as hostages for their good be¬ 
havior. As usual with Indians, this threat 
proved effective. Pledges of continued 
loyalty were made, with an evident sincerity 
that satisfied the French leaders. 

Assured that he now had the situation well 
in hand, De Rouville proceeded to carry out 
the plan he had evolved for dealing with his 
insubordinate ally. Shortly after the stop 
was made at the mouth of the White River, 
Fighting Wolf was asked to appear before 
the commander. 

Disquieted though he was at this unex¬ 
pected turn of events, the Mohawk could not 
well disregard the summons. He went, but 
he went fully armed, and accompanied by 
his score of armed followers. What he saw, 
as he approached the fire before which de 
Rouville was standing, was not reassuring. 
Back of the officer were twenty armed 
Frenchmen, and as the Wolf and his com- 


234 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


panions seated themselves in response to a 
gesture of the commander, thirty more ap¬ 
peared in the woods on either hand. Worse 
still, the Abnaki, a hundred strong, followed 
the Frenchmen and took post in the rear of 
the Iroquois. 

Fighting Wolf looked in vain for the fel¬ 
low-tribesmen whom he thought he had won 
to his cause. De Rouville’s implied threat 
of reprisals had been effective. These Iro¬ 
quois, in order to be clear away from any 
possible trouble, had broken up into a dozen 
small parties and were scouring the neigh¬ 
boring hills for game. 

The French now completely controlled 
the situation. If so minded, de Rouville 
might easily have destroyed the entire band 
of Iroquois. In fact, some of his younger 
associates urged that course as a warning to 
the rest of the fickle allies at Caughnawaga. 
But the French leader was wise in Indian 
ways. He knew that any punishment short 
of death could be explained away to the 
Wolf’s fellow-tribesmen, and would prob¬ 
ably be approved as being only the Mo- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 235 


hawks’ just deserts. But let an Iroquois 
ally fall by a French bullet, even as a pen¬ 
alty for foul treachery, and the whole town 
of Caughnawaga was likely to go over to 
their former English friends, that blood 
might be paid for with blood. The punish¬ 
ment must be such that none might say it 
was unjust, and yet it must render Fighting 
Wolf ineffective to do harm. 

A long silence followed the slight rustle 
of moccasins on the snow, as the Abnaki took 
their position behind the Iroquois. If there 
was apprehension in the minds of the latter 
at sitting with their backs to a hundred of 
their hereditary enemies, it showed in not so 
much as the quiver of an eyelid. Stolid, 
silent, with eyes fixed on the snow in front 
of them, the Iroquois waited for the French 
leader to break the silence. 

At length De Rouville spoke, using the de¬ 
liberate, solemn manner of an Indian orator. 

“ When the war-dance was held before we 
left Montreal,” he said, using the tongue of 
the Iroquois, that all his hearers of that race 
might fully understand his words, “ when 


236 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


the war-dance was held, none leaped so high 
nor shouted so loudly as Fighting Wolf. 
His love for the Great Father across the salt 
water was so great, he said, that he could not 
be happy until his hatchet had struck the 
Great White Father’s English enemies. I 
believed the words of Fighting Wolf, and I 
made him chief of my scouts. 

“ But an evil spirit has come to dwell in 
the heart of the Wolf. No longer does he 
shout for love of the French. Instead, he 
goes about among my Iroquois and Abnaki 
friends, trying to persuade them to take up 
the hatchet against their white brothers. 
Such are not the deeds of one who loves the 
Great White Father. 

“ I have pondered long what punishment 
our Father across the seas would have me 
inflict upon his rebellious son. And because 
the Father loves all his children, I have de¬ 
cided that he would have none of them 
punished. Only would he recall the gifts 
that he has made to the rebellious ones. 

“ When we left Montreal, all my Iroquois 
friends were given new rifles, and full bullet- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 237 


pouches and powder-horns. Their old guns, 
which they themselves had bought, were left 
at home, for the great king does not wish his 
children to use up their own possessions in 
his service. 

“ But now the hearts of Fighting Wolf 
and of those who follow him have turned 
away from the service of the White Father, 
so they may no longer use his gifts. They 
desire to return to the English. They may 
go, for the Father would have none serve 
him unwillingly, but the guns they carry 
belong to the king. They must be left 
behind.” 

The French leader paused that the full 
import of his words might be gathered by his 
hearers. To he set adrift in the snowy 
wilderness, scores of leagues from home, 
without guns, or even bows and arrows, 
meant but one thing,—death through slow 
starvation. A sentence to immediate execu¬ 
tion would have been more merciful. Looks 
of grim satisfaction appeared upon the dark 
faces of the listening Abnaki, as those 
among them who had understood the words 


238 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


of De Rouville gave their meaning to the 
rest. At last their hated masters were to 
feel the lash of a master of their own. 

But among the Iroquois themselves, not a 
line of their impassive faces betrayed fear or 
even concern regarding the dreadful sen¬ 
tence pronounced upon them. Warriors 
who had been trained from infancy to bear 
the unspeakable sufferings of Indian torture 
without a moan were not likely to show 
weakness at the thought of hunger in the 
woods. 

De Rouville, however, had no intention of 
executing to the full the just sentence he had 
pronounced. Nothing was to he gained by 
the death of a handful of Mohawks. Much 
good might result from the effect upon the 
Iroquois people as a whole of undeserved 
clemency. He continued his harangue. 

“ Such is the sentence that comes from the 
mind of the Great White Father. It is just. 
But the heart of the Father is very tender, 
even toward such of his children as are 
unworthy. He will not do harm, even to 
those who turn against him. There- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 239 


fore, that I may do his will, I will allow the 
Wolf and his followers four rifles and as 
many horns of powder and pouches of bul¬ 
lets, that they may get food for themselves 
on their journey. 

“ The sun is yet two hours above the 
tree-tops,” De Rouville continued, “ and the 
trail to the long-houses of the Mohawks is 
open. Let Fighting Wolf and his band fol¬ 
low it.” 

No alternative to submission was open to 
the Iroquois. After a moment’s conference 
among themselves, all but four laid down 
their rifles upon the snow. Then, without a 
word to their former allies, the band rose 
and filed off up the frozen surface of White 
River. 


CHAPTER XXI 


Though Fighting Wolf and his band had 
been permitted to go their way to their old 
homes on the Mohawk without molestation, 
they were not allowed to go without observa¬ 
tion. Half a dozen French scouts, as skilled 
in woodcraft as the Indians themselves, 
hung, silent and invisible, on the flanks of 
the Iroquois band. 

When night fell, the scouts made their 
camp in a gully, safe from observation. At 
the first sign of dawn, they were again in 
position, watchful lest the Iroquois should 
delay their departure, and seek to join their 
fellow-tribesmen who had remained loyal to 
the French. 

Apparently Fighting Wolf had decided 
not to neglect the opportunity of escape 
from the consequences of his treachery to his 
allies. With the break of day, he and his 
band were on their snow-shoes, and, by noon, 
had covered fully twenty additional miles of 

240 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 241 


their homeward journey. At this point the 
French scouts left them, and returned to the 
Connecticut. 

The day had been spent by the main 
force in hunting, but with little result. A 
dozen squirrels and twice as many rabbits 
were divided among more than two hundred 
and fifty hungry people; scarcely more than 
a taste to each. 

On the following morning the hand broke 
up into fragments. In no other way could 
starvation be avoided, for the little army 
must now “ live on the country.” The re¬ 
maining Iroquois followed Fighting Wolf 
up White River to find their way through 
the mountains to Lake Champlain, and 
thence to their homes near Montreal. The 
Abnaki continued their course up the valley 
of the Connecticut, heading for Acadia. 
The French were to follow the Connecticut 
for some distance. Then they, too, would 
endeavor to find their way through the 
snowy defiles of the Green Mountains to the 
valley of the Richelieu. 

The allies were thus separated, first into 


242 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


two, then into three groups, but each of 
these groups was itself divided into little 
parties of a dozen or less which traveled and 
hunted independently. It was every man 
for himself, or, at least, every party for 
itself. 

No attempt was made by the leaders to 
form the various parties. The Indians went 
off by themselves, taking with them their 
English captives. The French chose their 
partners, took their share of the meager 
supplies, and departed. 

Perhaps because life was sweet, and be¬ 
cause every additional mouth in a party, 
other than those of hunters, made the hope 
of preserving it less bright, none of the 
French attached themselves to the little 
group that had undertaken to care for 
Mercy and little Charley. Louis, La Motte, 
and Perrot continued to be the sole 
“ horses ” in the team that Mercy drove. 

A very serious consultation was held by 
the three on the eve of the resumption of the 
journey. March was now half gone, but a 
belated cold wave had brought back the tern- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 243 


perature of January. Again the snow was 
firm and dry under the snow-shoes, and 
again great fires were necessary to make 
camping in the open endurable. 

But fuel was abundant. Perrot had taken 
upon himself the task of providing it, and 
his skill with the axe assured a plentiful 
supply. Wrapped in blankets spread on a 
soft couch of pine boughs, the two children 
slept in the warmth of the fire, unconscious 
of the anxious words of their elders. 

“ I am not a woodsman.” It was La 
Motte who spoke. “ I must trust you two to 
guide us through the maze of mountains that 
we crossed between the Richelieu and the 
Connecticut. I shall try to do my part on 
the march and in hunting, hut I confess that, 
unless the sun is shining, I have little idea 
whether we are going north or south, east 
or west. But I got some information that 
may be of value from one of our men who 
took part in a previous raid down the Con¬ 
necticut. 

“ The man said that about two days’ 
march above here we come to a series of 


244 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


three great bends in the river, all in a dis¬ 
tance of five or six miles. Then, about five 
miles above the last of these, two large 
streams, small rivers in fact, flow into the 
Connecticut, one from the east and one from 
the west. Their mouths are not far apart. 

“A day’s journey up the stream that 
comes from the west is a lake, two or three 
miles long, then a high ridge. Some ten 
miles from the lake is a river that runs into 
Lake Champlain. 

“ ‘ It is a long journey down the river to 
the lake/ the man said, ‘ and a hard one, but 
there is no easier route/ 

“ So now you have your chart and your 
course,” the lieutenant continued. “ I fear 
I should not be able to follow it myself, but 
perhaps you two can do it.” 

“ I do not claim to be much of a woods¬ 
man/’ said Perrot. “ I can use an axe, and 
I can shoot fairly well, but nearly all of my 
time has been spent on the farm. I am not 
at all sure that I could find my way alone in 
strange woods and mountains.” 

“ Well, Louis,” said La Motte, “ the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 245 


process of elimination seems to say that you 
are to be the leader of this party of five. 
Can you conduct us back to your good 
uncle’s cheery fireside? ” 

Louis was a bit aghast at the thought of 
assuming responsibility for the safety of the 
little band, two hundred mountainous, snow- 
covered miles from home. There seemed to 
be no alternative, however, so he answered as 
bravely as he might. 

“ I wish some one older and more experi¬ 
enced could lead us,” he said. “ I haven’t 
spent much time in the woods, and then I 
was not alone. But the sergeant was a good 
instructor, and he made me take the lead on 
the trail a number of times. I found that 
I had no difficulty in keeping my directions 
straight. I don’t know just why it was, but 
somehow I always seemed to know in what 
direction I was going. The sergeant said I 
possessed a 4 gift.’ He had it himself, and 
he said it was worth more in the woods than 
all the compasses ever made. From your 
description of the route, La Motte, I think 
it will not be hard to find. Our great task, 


246 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

of course, will be to get food enough along 
the way to give us strength to follow it.” 

So it was agreed that in all questions of 
the march, Louis’ word should govern. 

Then came the matter of subsistence. The 
supplies on hand were almost negligible: a 
pound or two of flour, and as much ham. 

“We shall have to trust to our guns,” said 
La Motte. “ Possibly we may run across 
some moose or deer. If we could get just 
one moose, or three or four deer, I believe 
we should be safe. Otherwise, the squirrels 
and rabbits will have to feed us. I wish I 
could exchange this rifle for my good shot¬ 
gun that I left in Paris. Hitting a squirrel 
or a bounding rabbit with a rifle is some¬ 
thing beyond me, I fear, even if the penalty 
for missing is a harder stomachache.” 

“ My gun is a smooth-bore musket,” said 
Perrot. “ I haven’t any small shot for it, 
but by flattening bullets by beating them on 
a stone, I can cut them up into little slugs 
that will do very well for small game. I 
have done that before, w T hen I ran out of 
shot.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


Daybreak now came at too early an hour 
for rising. Louis opened his eyes as the 
gray light filtered through the leafless 
branches of the trees under which he slept; 
then he turned over for two hours’ more 
sleep. 

It was not refreshing, sound slumber, 
however. Long continued hunger disturbed 
the lad’s rest. Visions of food flashed 
through his mind: banquets in Paris, feasts 
in his uncle’s home, and at camp-fires in the 
woods. Yet, though food in abundance 
seemed to be before him, always, just as he 
began to eat, the vision vanished. 

At length the hungry boy woke fully. 
The scent of food was strong in his nostrils. 
Surely this could not be only the effect of 
his last vision. 

Rolling over and kicking off his blanket, 
Louis saw the sturdy form of Perrot bent 
over a large pan that hissed and sputtered 

247 


248 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


in the heat of the camp-fire. A slight trace 
of smoke from the dish revealed it as the 
source of the appetizing odor. 

Springing to his feet and peering over 
Perrot’s shoulder into the pan, Louis saw 
that it was filled to the top with great sec¬ 
tions of fish, browning in the heat. 

“ Why, Perrot! ” the lad cried. “ Where 
did it come from? ” 

Perrot pointed to the middle of the river. 
There a hole two feet in diameter showed in 
the ice. Perrot had risen at daybreak, cut 
the hole with an axe, and, after an hour’s 
wait in the intense cold of early morning, 
had caught a ten-pound pickerel. 

The peasant’s fishing had not stopped as 
he prepared his catch for his hungry com¬ 
panions. Laid over the hole Louis saw a 
branch of a tree, half as thick as his wrist, 
from which the twigs had not been trimmed. 
Even as he looked the branch moved with a 
sudden jerk, then it began to bend and 
spring as if some unseen force were en¬ 
deavoring to draw it into the water. 

Running to the hole, Louis found the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 249 


force, a beautiful twelve-pounder, another 
pickerel, tugging and plunging at the end of 
the line that was attached to the branch. 
Then with the inconsistency of his kind, the 
fish suddenly stopped fighting. Louis 
pulled him gently to the surface, and with 
a quick jerk, landed him on the ice. Now 
that it was too late, the surprised fish re¬ 
newed its struggles, but the lad soon put an 
end to them and carried his prize to the 
camp. 

“We won’t need to worry about lack of 
food if we can get a couple of such fish as 
these every day,” said Louis as he came up 
to the fire. “ I am so hungry, though, that 
it seems to me I could eat the whole of one 
myself,” he added, as he squatted on the ice 
and began to clean the fish he had just 
caught. It did not occur to the lad to leave 
this menial and not very pleasant task to 
Perrot. The leaven of democracy, native to 
the frontier, was beginning to reach the very 
heart of the young noble. 

“ I have always found winter fishing very 
uncertain,” Perrot answered. “ On some 


250 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


days, the fish bite well. At other times, I 
have tried for a week without getting any. 
So perhaps we had best keep that second fish 
for to-morrow.” 

Strengthened by a pound of the delicious 
meat to each of the elders, and as much as 
they could eat to the children, the party was 
under way by seven o’clock. 

“We have what we might call full rations 
for to-day and to-morrow,” said Louis to La 
Motte, as they slipped into the simple har¬ 
ness of the sledge. “ I think we should drive 
ourselves hard and try to reach the two 
rivers that you spoke of by to-morrow night. 
I don’t want to be caught on the Connecticut 
in a thaw, and I suppose one is likely to come 
at any time now. If the ice should break 
up, it would probably take us a week to pull 
the sledge over the hills a distance that we 
could cover in two days on the ice, and a 
week’s delay might be most serious to us. 
When once we get off the main river, I sup¬ 
pose the chance of an early breaking up of 
the ice will be less.” 

Louis had reason to urge speed upon his 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 251 


companions. The biting north wind that 
had accompanied the cold wave had ceased, 
and as the sun came above the eastern hills, 
a gentle breeze from the south began to 
rustle the long needles of the pines. In it 
was an indescribable mildness, sure har¬ 
binger of an early thaw. 

In an hour the snow was soft, and by 
noon, water and slush three inches deep cov¬ 
ered the ice. Progress was difficult, but the 
urgent need of haste spurred on the 
marchers. 

Camp was made on the west bank of the 
river, lest a possible breaking up of the ice 
should cut the travelers off from their route 
to Champlain. When morning came, the ice 
was still in place. 

The thaw had now set in in earnest. All 
night long the woods had been filled with its 
sounds: the rustle of settling snow, the quick 
rush as a spruce sapling threw off the white 
burden that had bowed it to the earth. 
Then, from under the white mantle of snow, 
came a muffled murmur and gurgle as the 
brooks resumed their age-long song. 


252 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


From the river came sounds less musical, 
though not more portentous: the cracking of 
breaking ice. Then a ribbon of clear water 
showed along the bank of the river. 

There was now no delay for a comfortable 
time for starting. Wakened at dawn by the 
watchful Perrot, a hasty breakfast was swal¬ 
lowed by the party. The march was re¬ 
sumed before the sun appeared. Conditions 
were better than on the previous day, for the 
surface water had disappeared through the 
cracks, as buoyancy raised the now free ice. 
Over the rough surface, honeycombed by the 
warmth of the sun, the marchers hurried on 
in their race with time. 

The river was no longer the safe, firm 
path over which the French and their allies 
had marched in confidence on their south¬ 
ward journey. For a fortnight, the grad¬ 
ually warming waters had eaten at the under 
surface of the ice. The cold wave had 
checked the progress of disintegration, but 
now that the warmth of the air had come to 
aid that of the water, dissolution was quick. 

No stop was made at noon. The children 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 253 


ate their fragments of cold fish as they rode; 
the men ate theirs walking. Minutes were 
too precious to be lost, for the ice still of¬ 
fered an open road to the north; the hills, 
covered with wet, clinging snow, were almost 
impassable. 

Had any of the men of the party been 
raised along rivers that flowed to the south, 
they would have been forewarned regarding 
the actions of such a stream as the Connec¬ 
ticut. But Louis and La Motte had lived 
among the north-flowing streams of northern 
France, while Perrot’s experience was with 
the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu. None 
of them thought of danger from the rear; 
their thoughts and their eyes were fixed 
upon the goal ahead: the mouth of the river 
flowing from the west, five miles beyond the 
great bends of the Connecticut. 

The sun was two hours high when the first 
of the three bends appeared, a mile away, 
ending a nearly straight reach of four or 
five miles. Louis gave a shout of joy. 

“ We shall make it, La Motte,” he cried. 
“ There are still nearly three hours of day- 


254 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


light, and our goal should not be more than 
ten miles away. We will have-” 

The sentence was cut short by a cry from 
Perrot. 

The breaking up of the ice on the Con¬ 
necticut had been under way for two weeks 
or more. Beginning on the lower reaches of 
the river, the process had worked rapidly 
northward. Checked by the cold of the past 
two or three days, it had since resumed its 
course with increased swiftness. Hour by 
hour, it gained upon the travelers who, in 
their ignorance, looked ahead for danger, not 
suspecting the approach of a silent foe from 
the rear. And now, at last, the foe struck. 

As Perrot called to his companions, he 
pointed a hundred feet ahead. There his eye 
had caught the first appearance of a crack 
in the ice, a long, dark line that extended far 
to the right and left. As he looked, the 
crack was transformed to a ribbon of open 
water. 

Instantly, the three men leaped ahead to 



ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 255 

reach the gap while it might yet be passed. 
But the current of the swollen river was too 
swift, and, in half a minute, a ten-foot reach 
of dark water barred their escape. 

Blocked in front, the team of men swerved 
to the left. Twenty feet of open water now 
separated the ice from the shore, but pos¬ 
sibly it was shallow enough for wading. 
But, before the edge of the ice could be 
reached, the whole floating mass was broken 
up by the surging current. So rotten was 
the ice that few pieces more than a rod 
square remained. 

“We must get on separate floes,” cried 
Louis. “ Perrot, will you take the sledge 
and the three guns? La Motte, if you will 
carry the boy, I will take Mercy. We may 
have to swim for it.” 

Throwing their rifles and ammunition on 
the sledge, the young men seized the chil¬ 
dren. Even as they did so, the floe on which 
they stood broke into three pieces. Perrot 
leaped ahead with the sledge to another 
block of ice. Louis and La Motte found 
temporary security on floes not more than a 


256 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


dozen feet square. Then all three worked 
their way gradually, as best they might, 
from block to block toward the shore. 

By this time, the floating ice had attained 
the full speed of the current. With their 
increased velocity, the floes divided until 
each of the three men found himself sepa¬ 
rated, by wide lanes of open water, from his 
comrades. 

For half an hour this continued; then a 
slight bend of the river to the left caused 
the ice to move slowly toward the western 
bank. Anxiously the three watched the slow 
narrowing of the strips of water. The 
action of the currents had now brought the 
three loaded floes in line abreast. Perrot, 
with the sledge, was nearest the shore, La 
Motte was separated from him by only ten 
feet of open water. Louis was fifty feet 
farther from land. 

Passing the bend, Perrot’s and La Motte’s 
floes were driven rapidly to shore. With a 
shout of exultation, the peasant leaped the 
last few feet of open water, following the 
sledge which he had thrown ahead of him. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 257 


Two minutes later, a similar shout came 
from La Motte as he also gained solid ground. 
Then, leaving Charley with the sledge, the 
two men followed Louis down-stream. 

Meantime, the floe on which Louis stood 
with Mercy had likewise been carried shore¬ 
ward. Little by little, the spaces separating 
it from other floating masses closed up. The 
current was swift, however, and carried the 
lad and his companion quickly toward the 
bend in the shore line. Once past this point, 
the centrifugal force that had caused the 
shifting of the ice toward the western hank 
would he lost, and again the eddies of the 
main current would cause the floating blocks 
of ice to separate. Louis realized this, with¬ 
out analyzing the causes. He watched the 
narrowing lanes of water between him and 
the next floe shoreward anxiously. From 
twelve feet wide, it became ten, then eight, 
and finally, after a long wait, six. 

Taking Mercy in his arms, the lad backed 
to the far edge of his ice-cake to get as long 
a run as possible for his leap. He should 
span at least ten feet in his jump, for he did 


258 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


not dare trust the rotten ice nearer than two 
feet from its edge. Alone, the leap would 
have been easy, but, with the dead-weight 
of a forty-pound child in his arms, he knew 
that all his strength would be required to 
land safely. 

Louis did not make ten feet in the jump, 
but he did reach the edge of the adjacent 
floe. As he had feared, the ice broke under 
his feet, but, with a desperate lunge, he 
threw himself and the child prone on the sur¬ 
face of the floe. Both were bruised, and 
Louis was wet nearly to the waist, but they 
were temporarily safe. 

This floe was larger than the one just left; 
it measured nearly fifty feet across, and ex¬ 
tended to within that distance of the now 
receding shore. Between were two smaller 
cakes. 

Louis saw that, unless he were to face the 
tremendous risk of being carried for an in¬ 
definite distance down the river on his dis¬ 
solving support, he must act at once. With 
a leap, he landed on one of the small floes. 
A moment later, he reached the other, but 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 259 


the treacherous ice broke under his weight, 
and the lad, with his clinging burden of 
humanity, plunged into the icy water. 

Louis could swim, but unfortunately he 
had never trained himself to support another 
in the water. The best he could now do was 
to gain one of the fragments of the broken 
floe and cling to it with one hand, while with 
the other arm he held the little girl above 
water. 

Chilled as he was by his successive duck¬ 
ings, Louis could not have held long to his 
support, but of this there was no need. The 
instant he saw the lad in the water, Perrot 
plunged in to the rescue. A dozen strong, 
steady strokes carried him to Louis’ side. 

“ Can you swim in alone? ” he asked. 
Louis nodded his head; his jaws were so set 
by the chill of the water that he could not 
speak. 

Treading water, Perrot shifted the shiver¬ 
ing form of the little girl to his broad back. 

“ Now, you go ahead, and swim with all 
your might,” he said to Louis. “ I will fol¬ 
low.” 


260 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

The chill of the icy water was fast numb¬ 
ing the hoy’s faculties, but, with an effort, 
he struck out for the shore. His usually 
strong strokes were slow and uncertain, and 
half-way to land his right leg was doubled 
up with a cramp. But when within a rod 
of the bank, La Motte reached out to him 
with a long stick. Grasping it with one 
hand, the lad was drawn ashore. Perrot fol- 

lowed a moment later. 

With Mercy in his arms, La Motte ran 
for the sledge. Perrot and Louis followed 
as fast as their clinging, water-soaked cloth¬ 
ing would allow. When they arrived, La 
Motte had already stripped the girl of her 
wet garments and wrapped her in a warm 
blanket. Louis and Perrot needed no urg¬ 
ing to do the same for themselves. Mean¬ 
time, La Motte gathered fuel and started a 
fire. In its glow, chilled bodies regained 
their normal heat, and blood began again to 
circulate through numb fingers and toes. 

As it would require hours for the satu¬ 
rated garments to dry, thought of further 
progress on that day was abandoned. The 



The treacherous ice broke under his weight.— Page 259 , 




























ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 261 


usual shelter and beds of pine-boughs were 
made. To the unaccustomed hands of La 
Motte fell the task of stripping the young- 
pines of their flexible, needle-covered 
branches and of cutting down small trees for 
the shelter, as well as searching out dry wood 
for the fire. The extremely simple tem¬ 
porary attire of Louis and Perrot, a blanket 
wrapped about the body, did not permit 
them to be of much assistance to their com¬ 
rade. 

For dinner, the last of the pickerel that 
Perrot had caught was eaten. The children 
then quickly fell asleep in their warm, soft 
bed. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


For a long time, Louis and his com¬ 
panions gazed thoughtfully into the fire. 
The mind of each was busy with the prob¬ 
lems of subsistence on the journey to the 
still-distant Richelieu. But it was contrary 
to the nature of La Motte to sit long in 
gloom. He broke in upon the silence with 
a laugh. 

“ I must have seemed anything but heroic 
to you to-day, Louis,” he said, “ to help you 
out of the water with a stick, as one might 
a drowning puppy. But it seemed to me 
that a dry craven might be of more use just 
then than a wet hero.” 

“ The stick was as welcome to me as ever 
lance of belted knight was to a hard-pressed 
comrade in arms,” answered Louis. “ I 
never before knew how cold water could be, 
nor how the chill of it could sap one’s 
strength. But now that that is over, I seem 
to feel all the better for it.” 

262 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 263 

“ The fact that you have had a bath and 
a good rub-down may account for it,” an¬ 
swered his companion, a bit drily. “ Our 
toilet accommodations, since leaving your 
good uncle’s house, have not been such as to 
encourage frequent bathing. I have heard 
that Russians sometimes bathe through a 
hole in the ice, but I never heard of a 
Frenchman doing it, unless he fell in by ac¬ 
cident, as you did. So now, Mr. Leader, 
what are your plans for getting us to the 
estate of the Seignior Dupuy, where I can 
get a bath without resorting to such heroic 
measures? ” 

“ There seems to be but one thing to do,” 
answered Louis. “ The river ice is gone for 
good. Whether the tributary river you 
mentioned is still frozen over, is question¬ 
able. It seems to me, we might as well 
break away from the Connecticut and follow 
a straight course to the northwest. We may 
strike the lake you told us of. At least, we 
will be heading toward the lower part of 
Lake Champlain. What do you think, Per- 
rot?” 


264 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ We will gain nothing by following the 
river,” answered the farmer. “We would 
lose distance by following its bends, and, 
after this thaw, we could not expect to catch 
fish for our support. We might as well 
strike a straight course for home, and de¬ 
pend on our guns for food.” 

As La Motte had no better suggestion to 
make, the overland route, difficult as it must 
be, was decided upon. 

For three days, the party struggled over 
the hills of the rugged basin of the Con¬ 
necticut. Progress was extremely slow and 
difficult. The melting snow clung to the 
snow-shoes and made them so heavy that 
legs cramped under the strain of lifting 
them. It packed under the rough, unshod 
runners of the sledge until they ploughed 
their way through the snow instead of glid¬ 
ing over it. Perhaps worst of all, it fre¬ 
quently gave way over streamlets in the bot¬ 
tom of ravines, and plunged the travelers 
into a foot or more of ice-cold water. 

Six miles a day was good progress under 
such circumstances. Such distance was at- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 265 


tained only at the cost of utter exhaustion, 
little relieved by the scanty allowance of fish 
left from Louis’ catch, for no game had been 
encountered. 

As the sun touched the trees on the after¬ 
noon of the fourth day, a break appeared 
in the monotonous gray and green of the 
forest, and soon an ice-covered lake came in 
sight. 

“ You guessed well, Louis,” said La Motte 
appreciatively, as he saw the pond. “ Half 
the time I haven’t had any idea which way 
we were going, but this must be the lake we 
were looking for.” 

It was dark when the lake was reached. 
Camp was made on the south shore; a sup¬ 
perless camp, however, for all but the chil¬ 
dren. To them, a morsel of fish and bread 
was given. 

“ Thank God we have had food for the 
youngsters, at least,” said La Motte when 
the even breathing of the children in their 
spruce bed showed them to be fast asleep, 
“ and there is enough left to carry them over 
to-morrow. What we shall give them after 


266 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


that, I am sure I don’t know. The game 
seems to have deserted these hills altogether. 
I have seen nothing but one little rabbit in 
the three days since we left the Connecticut, 
and he was off like a flash before I could 
even aim at him.” 

Daybreak gave an opportunity to examine 
the lake. Except for a margin of water of 
varying width, it was covered with ice: the 
gray, rough-surfaced ice of spring. Perrot 
scanned the adjacent shore line, or as much 
of it as he could see. As he was doing so, he 
was joined by Louis. 

“ Do you think there is any chance of get¬ 
ting fish from the lake? ” asked the lad. 
“ That seems to be our only hope for food, 
and we can’t keep on long without some¬ 
thing to eat.” 

“ I don’t believe there is any chance of 
getting fish to bite with the water and ice in 
this condition,” answered Perrot. “ But we 
may be able to get one some other way. Do 
you see that cove a mile or so to the west, 
where the edge of the ice is a hundred yards 
or more from the shore? The pickerel may 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 267 


be spawning there. If so, I think I can get 
some of them.” 

“ But how would you catch them if, as you 
say, they won’t bite? ” asked Louis. “ We 
haven’t a spear or a net. I have heard of 
Indians catching fish with their hands; 
whether they can actually do it, or whether 
it is only another of the wonderful stories 
they like to tell about their own exploits, is 
more than I know. At least I am sure I 
should starve to death before I could learn 
to feed myself that way.” 

“ If I see one not too far away, I can 
shoot it,” said Perrot. “ I have done it many 
times in flooded marshes along the Riche¬ 
lieu.” 

“ Shoot them! ” said Louis in amazement. 
“ How could you shoot fish that are under 
water unless you were right over them? Do 
you mean that they leap out of the water 
and you hit them in the air? I doubt if even 
my cousin Margaret could do that.” 

Perrot laughed. 

“ I am no such marksman as Mademoi¬ 
selle de La Ronde,” he said. “ No, this kind 


268 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


of shooting requires little but a willingness 
to get your feet and legs wet. You simply 
shoot at the water above the fish. Then, if 
he is not too far away, he floats to the sur¬ 
face belly up, and you get him.” 

“ But what makes him float up? ” per¬ 
sisted Louis who was plainly a little skep¬ 
tical as to the truth of the farmer’s words. 

“ I am sure I don’t know,” answered Per- 
rot. “ It may be that the jar of the explo¬ 
sion, or of the shot hitting the water, or both 
combined, stuns him.” 

An hour later, the cove which Perrot had 
seen was reached. As he had thought, a 
broad belt of shallow water, not more than 
three feet deep, separated the ice from the 
shore. 

“ Let us stop here for a while,” said Per¬ 
rot. “ If the fish are spawning, we shall 
soon see signs of them.” 

His companions were more than willing 
to comply with the suggestion. Lack of 
food was taking heavy toll of their strength. 
Already, though he had marched only a 
mile, Louis felt a lassitude like that which 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 269 


follows long illness. Muscles that should 
have carried him with a full, easy stride 
almost refused to respond to the orders 
of his brain. Even his mind failed to 
act with its usual keenness. Like an over¬ 
worked beast of burden, the lad plodded 
over and through the sodden snow, pulling 
his load by leaning his weight against the 
trace which, in turn, kept him from falling. 
At the words of Perrot he stopped, threw 
off the trace, and sank listlessly upon the 
trunk of a fallen tree. Louis was about 
spent. 

La Motte was in little better condition 
than his younger companion, but the reserve 
strength of Perrot, accumulated through 
long years of strenuous toil, was not yet ex¬ 
hausted. In fact, since leaving camp, to the 
farmer had fallen almost the entire work of 
dragging the sledge. Louis and La Motte 
had been able to do little more than go 
through the motions of pulling. 

For a quarter of an hour, nothing on the 
glassy surface of the water gave a sign of 
life beneath it. 


270 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ They don’t seem to be spawning,” said 
Perrot at length, keen disappointment in his 
voice. “ I am afraid we shall have to go on 
and trust to our guns to feed us.” 

Another ten minutes the little party 
waited, reluctant to give up even what began 
to seem a forlorn hope. Silence very like 
that of despair settled over the group. 
Even the children stopped their usual care¬ 
less chatter, as their exclamations and ques¬ 
tions failed to elicit responses from their 
elders. 

Suddenly the silence was broken by a 
shout from Perrot. 

“ There they are,” he said. “A ripple! I 
see a ripple on the surface of the water.” 

He pointed toward a spot a hundred 
yards to the west. There the smooth, dark 
surface of the lake was broken by a swirl of 
water, that spent itself in a series of circular 
wavelets. Perrot did not wait for a second 
indication of the presence of the coveted fish. 
Running along the shore to a point opposite 
the spot where the sign had been seen, he 
waded into the ice-cold water. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 271 


Reaching a point where the water was up 
to the middle of his thigh, Perrot’s motions 
became very cautious, lest the sound of a 
splash should alarm his prey. Suddenly the 
watchers on the shore saw another swirl, 
twenty feet ahead of the hunter, or rather 
fisher. Instantly Perrot fired, then rushed 
to the place where his bullet had hit the 
water. He picked up a pickerel, not less 
than thirty inches long, and another, and 
another. The great fish were as dead, 
stunned by the shot, but their captor hurried 
them ashore, where a knife-thrust made sure 
of them. 

Perrot lost no time listening to the con¬ 
gratulations of his companions. More swirls 
indicated the presence of more fish, and after 
a run of a hundred yards along the shore to 
restore the circulation to his benumbed legs, 
he was after them. In the course of an hour, 
he secured no less than two dozen fine 
pickerel. 

Meanwhile, La Motte and Louis had not 
been idle, and by the time their companion 
had concluded his cold work, breakfast was 


272 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


waiting for him and them. It was a simple 
meal, just broiled fish without even salt to 
give it flavor. But never was Parisian din¬ 
ner eaten by the two young men with such 
gusto. An entire fish, weighing not less 
than twelve pounds, disappeared as if by 
magic. Even then Louis craved more, but 
his stomach simply had no more room. 

For an hour after eating, the three men 
sat in silence around the fire. Like a snake 
that has swallowed a frog, they gave the en¬ 
tire energy of their beings to the assimilation 
of the enormous quantity of food they had 
swallowed. Gradually, however, normal 
circulation to their brains was restored and, 
with it, came thoughts and plans regarding 
the future. 

“ Somehow we must make these fish feed 
us for the rest of our journey,” said Louis, 
the first to speak. “ There are enough to 
give us one a day for at least three weeks. 
By that time, we should reach my uncle’s 
home. But how can we preserve them so 
long, now that the days are so warm? ” 

“ I think our warm spell of weather is 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 273 

about to end,” said Perrot. “ Last night, as 
the sun set, I saw the sun-dogs, and that 
means cold weather.” 

“ Sun-dogs,” repeated Louis in surprise, 
“ what in the world are they, and what have 
they to do with the weather? ” 

“ Sun-dogs are two glowing spots in the 
sky, just above the horizon, one on each side 
of the setting sun,” answered the peasant. 
“You may not have them in France, but we 
see them in America almost every year. 
And when they come, whether it is fall or 
spring or winter, cold weather always fol¬ 
lows.” 

“ I hope you are right,” answered Louis. 
“ I thought I had had my fill of cold weather 
for one winter, but if a cold wave will pre¬ 
serve our fish and also freeze this slush we 
have been walking in, it is welcome.” 

The atmospheric condition that had pro¬ 
duced the phenomenon observed by Perrot 
soon brought the expected change in the 
weather. Before noon the wind, which for 
days had blown steadily from the south, 
veered to the northeast. Soon snow began 


274 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


to fall, in great heavy flakes that floated 
lazily down like feathers from the breast of 
a white duck. 

Gradually the slush, so trying to the 
travelers, was buried under the soft new 
snow. Sledge and snow-shoes again func¬ 
tioned normally, as the party continued its 
journey through the woods and over the hills 
that skirted the lake. 

It was well that traveling conditions were 
improved, for the sledge was no longer 
light. Not less than two hundred pounds 
of the newly-caught fish had been loaded on 
it. This, with the weight of the two chil¬ 
dren, of blankets and guns and ammunition, 
made a load that, at times, taxed the 
strength of the “ team.” But that “ team ” 
now worked with a will. No longer did the 
unspoken dread of starvation combine with 
actual lack of food to sap the strength of 
heart and muscle. In spite of the weight of 
the sledge and the ruggedness of the path, 
mile after mile was covered, and, when camp 
was made, it was on the western slope of the 
ridge that divided the tributaries of the lake 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 275 


they had left from the waters that flowed 
into Lake Champlain. 

The snowfall, which had continued heavily 
all the afternoon, now diminished as the 
wind shifted to the northwest. 

“We shall need a warm camp to-night,” 
said Louis, as he brought in a load of dry 
branches for firewood. “ Your friends, the 
sun-dogs, seem to have told the truth, Bap¬ 
tiste,” he continued, addressing Perrot. 
“And we are so near the top of the ridge 
that we shall have little protection from the 
wind.” 

And a warm camp was made. In the 
bottom of a ravine, dense-foliaged little 
spruces, piled thick over a frame of pine 
saplings, let hardly a zephyr reach the warm 
couches of spruce-boughs, though a bitter, 
biting northwester roared through the tree- 
tops. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


All the next day the gale continued, with 
a swiftly dropping temperature. Again the 
snow was hard and crisp, and the heavy 
sledge slid easily over its surface. Twelve 
more miles were covered before the gather¬ 
ing dusk gave warning that another shelter 
must be built. 

The route now followed was down the val¬ 
ley of a large creek that flowed to the south¬ 
west. Mile by mile, the size of the stream 
increased until it began to merit the name of 
river. 

On the third day after leaving the lake, 
the travelers came to another little river 
flowing from the south. Fortunately for 
their comfort, the cold had been severe 
enough to provide a bridge of ice, and the 
new stream was crossed dry-shod. 

Hardly had the forest on the farther side 
been entered before La Motte, who was lead¬ 
ing, stopped with an exclamation of sur¬ 
prise. 


276 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 277 

“Look!” he said excitedly. “There is 
the track of a sledge. And here are moc¬ 
casin prints in the snow, a lot of them. A 
large party must have passed here since the 
snow-storm.” 

Throwing off their traces, the men ex¬ 
amined the tracks carefully. At length, 
Louis spoke. 

“ There is no doubt that a large party has 
passed here recently,” he said. “ They are 
headed down-stream, as we are. Whether 
they are whites, or Indians, or both, I am 
sure I don’t know. If our friend, the ser¬ 
geant, were here, I suppose he could tell us 
that, but I confess that, to me, all tracks 
look pretty much alike.” 

“ This is probably one of the parties that 
took the route up the White River,” said La 
Motte. “ They probably are friends, but if 
they should prove to be Fighting Wolf and 
his band, I am afraid our scalps would not 
stay on our heads long after we were seen. 
Perhaps we had better keep out of sight.” 

“ We have at least the advantage of be¬ 
ing behind,” Louis answered, “ and of not 


278 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


having to use our guns to get food. We 
can follow the trail of this party until we 
have a chance to find out who they are, for 
we shall see them first.” 

Had Louis been more skilled in matters 
pertaining to the forest, he would have 
realized that, in all probability, the strangers 
were maintaining themselves by hunting, and 
would, therefore, be scattered over a wide 
area. The course he proposed was full of 
danger, in case they proved to be enemies. 

But fate was kinder than the young 
woodsman was wise. In the middle of the 
afternoon, smoke was seen rising above the 
trees, half a mile down the river. As the 
party stopped, with the intention of recon- 
noitering before advancing further, a call 
sounded from the forest in their rear. Turn¬ 
ing, Louis saw four Indians, all armed, ad¬ 
vancing along the trail. There was no time 
to seize the guns from the sledge. The 
party was completely at the mercy of the 
newcomers. Thoughts of violence were far 
from the minds of the Indians, however, as 
they uttered guttural exclamations of greet- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 279 


ing. And as they came nearer, their stum¬ 
bling steps and shrunken features told the 
tale of starvation. 

When the four Indians reached the sledge, 
they threw their guns upon it and sank down 
in the snow. Holding out his hands in 
piteous appeal, one said, in broken French: 
“ Food—please—we starve.” 

Relieved beyond measure that the trap 
into which he had led his friends had proved 
to be harmless, Louis quickly produced one 
of the now hard-frozen pickerel. With an 
axe, he chopped it into thick slices. Raven¬ 
ously the Indians devoured the icy food. 
When the last morsel had disappeared, they 
rose and led the way toward the still visible 
smoke. 

The party to which the four hunters be¬ 
longed had well-nigh succumbed to starva¬ 
tion. Of the ten men who composed it, but 
four awoke that morning with strength even 
to attempt the toil of the hunt. For five 
days, they had had not a morsel of food. 
This, of itself, would not have been sufficient 
to exhaust the vitality of the hardy Indians, 



280 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


had they not been already weakened by the 
scanty rations of the preceding month. 

While the hunters wandered fruitlessly 
through the bleak forest, their companions 
in camp lay listlessly before the fire. No 
attempt had been made even to provide shel¬ 
ter from the bitter cold. Nature had reached 
its limit. Like stricken beasts of the woods, 
they lay on the snow, almost without 
thought, awaiting the end. 

That end would have come quickly had it 
not been for the one English prisoner in the 
party. Williams, the minister, was not less 
hardy than the toughest of his captors, and 
his strength had not been taxed by long 
weeks of deprivation. Moreover, there was 
in the man an indomitable spirit that his less 
highly developed companions did not pos¬ 
sess. They had fought the battle for life 
valiantly until they thought it lost, then lay 
down to die. He refused to accept defeat. 
Though weak as a child, and terribly emaci¬ 
ated, he had succeeded in getting enough 
wood to keep the fire going, and had even 
begun the construction of a little shelter. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 281 

As he saw the tall form of Williams bent 
over the fire which he replenished, Louis 
gave a shout of recognition. 

“ La Motte, it is our old friend, the minis¬ 
ter,” he said. “ So this must be one of our 
own parties that followed after Fighting 
Wolf up the White River. Well, I am glad 
it is not that of the Wolf. I don’t believe 
even starvation would tame him. Like a 
real wolf, he would be even more dangerous 
just because he was hungry.” 

Now that it was no longer needed, the 
strength of will that had sustained the minis¬ 
ter collapsed. Sinking beside the little fire, 
he held out his hands with a piteous moan. 

“ Food,” he whispered hoarsely. 44 Give 
me a little food, or I die.” 

Again was frozen fish eagerly devoured 
by white man and Indians alike; by only 
four of the five Indians, however. One 
gaunt form, curled up for warmth like a 
sleeping dog, responded not to the offer of 
food. Help had come too late. 

While La Motte and Baptiste carried the 
dead Iroquois into the forest, Louis re- 


282 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


plenished the fire and soon had a pan full 
of pickerel frying over it. In a kettle, he 
heated the ice-cold river water. The com¬ 
bination of the warm, easily-digested food, 
and of warm drink, together with the heat 
of a now roaring fire, worked marvels in the 
sufferers. Two hours after the meal was 
finished, a huge Mohawk, leader of the 
party, rose, stretched himself, and an¬ 
nounced his readiness to resume the journey. 

On the following day, anxiety regarding 
the now fast-dwindling supply of food was 
set at rest. An old bull moose and his fol¬ 
lowing of two cows, were tracked for miles 
through the forest, and finally slain. Part 
of the meat, an enormous quantity, in fact, 
was eaten at once; part was allowed to 
freeze; and part, to be used in warmer 
weather, was cut in strips and cured before 
the fire. 

Having now no delays due to hunting for 
subsistence, the combined parties made rapid 
progress. Continuing down the little river, 
now not so very little, Lake Champlain was 
reached in a week. Another week brought 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 283 


them to the outlet of the lake into the 
Richelieu. Here the parties separated. 
The Iroquois and their prisoner struck over¬ 
land to Montreal, while Louis and his com¬ 
panions followed the course of the Richelieu. 
Two days later, they were under the hos¬ 
pitable roof of the Seignior Dupuy. 


CHAPTER XXV 


It was the middle of May. Soft spring 
breezes had finally melted the deepest banks 
of snow in the most shady ravines. Brooks 
ran full and merrily among banks of cow¬ 
slips and violets, while robins and wrens 
busily prepared summer homes for antici¬ 
pated families. 

On the Dupuy farm, spring ploughing 
and seeding kept the men busy from dawn 
to dark. The women interspersed garden¬ 
ing with the necessary household tasks, not 
to the advantage of the latter, but much to 
the future benefit of the larder. 

On a bench beside the door, absorbing the 
welcome sunshine, sat Margaret de La Ronde 
with the newest member of the Dupuy fam¬ 
ily, little Mercy. The seignior, following 
the promptings of his own generous heart 
no less than the suggestion of his good wife, 
had adopted the little Puritan orphan as his 
own daughter. 


284 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 285 

Margaret, who from her earliest memo¬ 
ries, had desired a little sister, had taken the 
stranger to her heart. During the wet, dis¬ 
mal weeks following the breaking up of win¬ 
ter, she had taught Mercy to speak French 
intelligibly, but with an accent that added 
charm to her simple sentences. Nor had the 
teaching been altogether done by the older 
girl. Margaret picked up half a hundred 
words and phrases of English, while Mercy’s 
chatter gave her a glimpse of a life very dif¬ 
ferent from her own. 

Even at her age, the English habit of in¬ 
dustry had been instilled in Mercy’s mind. 
On this particular morning, she was busy 
upon a sampler which she had started two 
weeks earlier. As a base, she used a piece of 
homespun linen. Madame Lucille had also 
supplied enough thread for the lettering. 

“ There,” said the younger girl, holding 
up her work for inspection. “ The last let¬ 
ter of the alphabet is done. Now show me 
how to spell my new name. Of course, I 
can spell 4 Mercy,’ but I never can remem¬ 
ber how the letters come in 4 Dupuy.’ ” 


286 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ Wait a minute and I will show you,” 
Margaret said. 

Running into the house, she soon came 
back with a piece of charcoal from the 
hearth. 

“ This will do for a pencil,” she said, “ but 
what shall we use to write on? There 
doesn’t seem to be an extra piece of paper 
or even a smooth piece of wood around the 
whole house.” 

The girl looked around somewhat hope¬ 
lessly, for smooth surfaces of any kind were 
a rarity on frontier farms. Then her eye 
lightened. 

“ I have it,” she said, “ we will use a 
muskrat-skin.” Stretched inside out over 
light sticks of wood bent into the shape of 
hairpins, a score of skins of the little animals 
were hung on pegs in the side of the house, 
curing in the sun. The smooth inner skin 
was dry and hard. Taking one of them 
from its peg, Margaret printed on it the 
words, “ Mercy Dupuy.” 

“ There,” she said. “ Now you won’t get 
it wrong. When I come back next Sunday, 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 287 


you must have it all done. Then we will get 
Louis to make a frame, and the sampler will 
be just like those you told me about that 
you saw in Deerfield.” 

An hour later, Margaret was in her canoe 
speeding up-stream to her home. 

In mid-forenoon of the following day, 
spring activities were at their height. In the 
fields, the sergeant smoothed the rough fur¬ 
rows with ox team and drag. Louis and his 
uncle followed after with hoes and bags of 
seed-corn, planting the yellow grains that 
promised to multiply even beyond the scrip¬ 
tural hundred-fold. In the garden near the 
house, Madame Lucille and her half-breed 
helper prepared beds of softest loam for the 
seeds of beets and onions, of peas and beans, 
seeds which little Mercy proudly dropped 
or poked into place. 

Suddenly the silence was broken by a cry 
from the forest to the south. Then a lad of 
ten darted from among the trees. 

“ The Mohawks,” he shouted, when still 
two hundred yards from the seignior. 


288 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The two words were enough. By magic, 
the elder Dupuy was transformed from a 
humble farmer to a feudal chieftain, respon¬ 
sible for the defense of his family and his 
tenantry. 

“ Quick, Louis,” he commanded, “ take 
both hoes and corn-bags. Run to the house 
and get your rifle and mine, and the ser¬ 
geant’s. Don’t forget the powder-horns and 
bullet-pouches. Then ring the alarm bell. 
Dumont and I will drive the hogs and calves 
into the basement of the house.” 

Louis needed no urging to put him at top 
speed on the short run to the house. But the 
excited lad acted no more quickly than did 
his relatives. Even as he darted into the 
farmhouse, Madame Lucille and her maid, 
by closing and bolting doors and oaken shut¬ 
ters, transformed it into a fortress. As he 
emerged with the weapons, hoofs clattered 
down the lane that led from the pens to the 
basement of the house, and by the time the 
first note of the warning bell had sounded, 
the animals were in safety. 

The seignior and Dumont, now armed, set 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 289 


to work to carry as much of the contents of 
granaries and cribs as possible to the shelter 
of the house. When Louis had finished ring¬ 
ing out the alarm, he joined his uncle in this 
salvage work. 

“ How about the cattle in the woods, 
Uncle? ” he asked, as he came up to his per¬ 
spiring relative. “ Would you like to have 
me try to drive them in for you? If I can 
get them in before the Mohawks come, we 
shall be just that much better off. If not, I 
can stay in the forest until the Indians have 
left” 

“ That was well spoken, boy,” the seignior 
responded heartily. “ But there is no need 
to run the risk of going into the woods. All 
our animals are trained for this emergency. 
They will soon be coming in of themselves.” 

Even as Dupuy spoke, the lowing of cat¬ 
tle in the margin of the forest announced 
their approach. A minute later two cows, 
all that the Deerfield expedition had left to 
the seignior, broke from the woods, and 
dashed madly for the barn. In another min¬ 
ute they, too, were safe under the house. 


290 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ How in the world do you make even 
your cattle understand that an enemy is 
coming? ” asked Louis, as his uncle closed 
the basement door on the cows. 

“ Salt does the trick, lad,” answered the 
seignior. “We won’t take time to watch 
her, but by this time your aunt is giving to 
each animal a quart or so of salty earth that 
we get at a deer-lick near here. After this 
has been done two or three times, the cattle 
know that the ringing of the alarm means 
salt for them. Then they come in at the 
sound of the bell as fast as the most timid 
peasant girl.” 

So promptly had the well-ordered ar¬ 
rangements of the seignior been carried out 
that not ten minutes had elapsed between 
the first alarm and the closing of the door on 
the last cow to enter the basement. For an¬ 
other ten minutes, the work of securing the 
grain and hay went forward in silence. 
Then came the rush of Dupuy’s tenants for 
safety in the little citadel. 

All came by canoe, for not only was such 
means of transport the quickest; it also was 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 291 


by far the safest, for if the refugees had 
found the fort already invested by the foe, 
two minutes would have put them in the 
comparative safety of the woods beyond the 
river. 

In the canoes were all the movable effects 
of the tenants: tools, dishes, bedding, cloth¬ 
ing. Seated on and among the bundles were 
the numerous progeny of the peasants, vary¬ 
ing in number from five to fifteen, accord¬ 
ing to the ages of the parents. 

No time was lost in unloading the canoes. 
As each little craft came to the landing, it 
was run up on the shore, clear of the water. 
Its owners then lifted it bodily to their 
shoulders and carried it into the basement of 
the house. Canoe, cargo, and crew were thus 
made safe at once. 

Half an hour after the alarm was given, 
all the families that lived on the Dupuy 
seigniory were safe. As the grain and fod¬ 
der had, by this time, been carried into the 
basement of the house, the seignior had 
leisure to look about him. No sign was 
there as yet of the presence of an enemy in 


292 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


the surrounding forest. As the bustle of 
preparation died down, the wonted silence 
settled over the woods; silence broken only 
by the coarse calls of a flock of crows that 
flapped their way over the newly-plowed 
fields. 

Summoning the lad who had given the 
alarm, Dupuy obtained the details of his 
morning’s experience. He was one of the 
numerous flock of Baptiste Perrot. Shortly 
after breakfast, he had driven his father’s 
cows to the woods to pasture. Boylike, he 
had not hastened his return. When, an hour 
later, he reached the edge of the woods that 
surrounded his father’s fields, he noticed a 
heavy mass of smoke above the trees to the 
south. Such a smoke at this time of the year 
could mean but one thing, a burning build¬ 
ing. The fire might be accidental, but was 
more likely the work of Indians. 

The boy darted forward to give the alarm, 
but as he cleared the bushy fringe of the 
field, a sight met his eyes that, for a moment, 
held him motionless in terror. Then, true to 
his frontier instinct, he dropped to the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 293 


ground and crawled to a stump from which 
he could see without danger of discovery. 

What transpired on the little clearing was 
enough to shake the nerves of a person much 
older than this little lad, for, from the woods 
and across the fields south of the farm build¬ 
ings, rushed a score of painted Indians. 

They were met by the fire of a half-dozen 
guns from the house, which caused them to 
seek shelter behind the stumps of the field. 
Their first attack had failed. Warned by 
the smoke to the south, Perrot had gained 
the shelter of his solidly-built house with the 
whole of his family, except the one boy in 
the woods. As he had arms enough for all 
his older children, as well as for himself and 
his wife, the task of the Mohawks was not 
likely to be an easy one. 

Realizing that he could best help his 
family by carrying news of the attack to 
Sieur Dupuy, the lad left his hiding-place 
and ran as fast as his little legs would carry 
him to the seigniory. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


“ Do you think we should try to get help 
to Perrot? ” asked Dupuy of his friend, the 
sergeant, when the lad completed his story. 

“ It would be a foolish thing to do,” 
answered Dumont decisively. “We have 
not more than fifteen men here who could 
go. If twenty Indians made the attack on 
Perrot’s house, there are probably several 
times that many in their entire band, for 
they would almost surely split into several 
parties in attacking the outlying farms. 
They will come together when they try to 
destroy us.” 

“ Of course, you are right,” answered 
Dupuy. In fact, it was the generous heart 
rather than the wise head of the seignior that 
had prompted the words. “ Perrot has done 
us a good turn, though,” he went on. “ He 
has checked the approach of the Mohawks 
and given us time to get ready for them. I 
wish we could help him.” 

294 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 295 


As Dupuy ceased speaking, a call 
sounded through the stillness; a long-drawn 
halloo, followed by what seemed a name. 
The location of the sound was uncertain. 
All strained their ears for a repetition. A 
moment later it came. 

“It is from the west bank of the river,” 
said the sergeant. “ That is an old trick of 
the Mohawks. They hope to get some one 
to put out in a canoe so that they can pick 
him off from the shore.” 

“ It seemed to me the name was that of 
La Motte,” said Louis, who stood near. 
“ And I thought the voice sounded like his.” 

“ Did you expect him at this time? ” asked 
Dumont. 

“ No,” answered Louis, “ still, it seemed 
like his voice.” 

Again the call came, this time very 
clearly. 

“ I believe the lad is right, Sergeant,” said 
the seignior. “ It surely sounds like La 
Motte’s name and voice.” 

“ It may he so,” Dumont answered, “ but 
it is a risky thing to try to get him across the 


296 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


river. We cannot expect the Mohawks’ 
attack to be delayed much longer.” 

“ I will go for him,” said Louis. “ There 
is no sign of the Indians yet, and if they 
should attack before I get back, La Motte 
and I will stay on the other side of the 
river.” 

“ Go quickly then,” said his uncle. 44 Du¬ 
mont will help you carry a canoe to the river. 
If we see anything to indicate that the 
Mohawks are at hand, we will fire a gun to 
warn you. And take three or four paddles. 
La Motte may not be alone, and a difference 
of a few seconds’ time on the return trip 
may mean much.” 

Two minutes later, Louis was driving at 
top speed across the river, and, in another 
minute, was gripping the hand of La Motte. 

The latter was not alone. A strapping 
Indian warrior, six feet tall, and built like a 
Greek statue, stood by his side. 

44 We must hurry back,” said Louis, as he 
released his friend’s hand. 44 But who is 
your companion? ” 

44 He is a Huron who has been my guide 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 297 

from Montreal,” answered the lieutenant. 
“ But why hurry, and why the question? ” 

“ A big band of Mohawks is in the neigh¬ 
borhood, and has attacked the house of our 
friend Perrot,” replied Louis. “ I shouldn’t 
care to have an Iroquois in the house just 
now, no matter how many times he had 
sworn allegiance to our king. But a Huron 
should be glad of a chance to even up old 
scores.” 

“No doubt, he would fight,” said La 
Motte, “ though, from all I hear, the Hurons 
haven’t had much spirit since they were scat¬ 
tered by the Iroquois half a century ago. 
But if you know of the Mohawk invasion, my 
trip was for nothing, for that was what I 
came to warn you of. Word of it came 
through Mohawk smugglers of Caughna- 
waga.” 

“You came too late to warn us but, I 
hope, not too late to help us fight them,” 
answered Louis, as he shoved the canoe from 
the shore. 

Propelled by three sets of strong arms, 
the little craft fairly shot over the water. It 


298 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


had not covered half the distance to the other 
shore, however, before the sound of the dis¬ 
charge of a rifle came from the house. 

“ Hurry, hurry,” said Louis tensely. 
“ That must be the gun my uncle said he 
would fire if the Mohawks were seen.” 

Though the water was foaming under the 
bow of the canoe, the craft seemed to Louis 
as sluggish as a floating log. At length, 
though, it grated on the strand. No at¬ 
tempt was made to carry it to the house, but, 
as a precaution against the Mohawks turn¬ 
ing it to account, it was shoved out into the 
current. 

As the three darted for the shelter of the 
blockhouse, a volley of musketry came from 
that structure. It was, of course, not di¬ 
rected at them, rather at nearly two score 
of dark figures, fantastic in war-paint and 
feathers, that had just come within rifle-shot 
to the south. 

Little damage was done by the fire, for 
the darting, leaping forms were harder to hit 
than so many bounding deer. The answer 
to the volley came not from the guns of the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 299 


Mohawks, but from their throats: a yell of 
exultation as they saw Louis and his two 
companions. 

A dozen of the savages rushed forward to 
intercept the three; the rest dropped behind 
stumps and opened a covering fire upon the 
house. It was an even race as regards dis¬ 
tance, but the Mohawks ran over newly- 
ploughed ground, while their prospective 
victims had the advantage of a firm, beaten 
path. Perhaps, too, the fear of capture, with 
its terrible consequences, was an even sharper 
spur than the desire for scalps. At any rate, 
the three reached the blockhouse five yards 
ahead of their pursuers. 

The door opened in the nick of time, and 
the Huron, Louis, and La Motte darted 
through the opening in order. The heavy 
door was slammed shut behind the lieu¬ 
tenant, but, before the bars could be re¬ 
placed, the impact of half a dozen heavy 
bodies forced it open again. 

With a shout of savage exultation, the 
twelve Iroquois pressed into the doorway. 
They were met by as many Frenchmen, 


300 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


almost the entire force of defenders other 
than the women and children. Little use 
was there now to man the loopholes. If the 
defense of the doorway failed, nothing else 
mattered. 

Interpreting correctly the cessation of the 
fire that had come from the house, the entire 
band of Mohawks left the shelter of tree 
or stump and swept forward to have a hand 
in at the finish. 

Meantime, a terrible struggle was waged 
at the open door. The assailants used 
knives, and tomahawks, and stone war-clubs 
with an effectiveness bred of lifelong train¬ 
ing. They were met with weapons even 
more effective, that the seignior’s fore¬ 
thought had provided for just such an event: 
woodsmen’s axes, in hands that knew their 
use. Under these heavy, keen-edged tools, a 
dozen Mohawks went down like cattle in the 
slaughtering pen, blocking the doorway with 
their bodies. For a moment, the attack was 
checked. Assailants and defenders, breath¬ 
less from the struggle, glared at each other 
through the half-filled opening. Then 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 301 


sounded the voice of the seignior, calling ap¬ 
parently to some one on the floor above. 

“ The water, Lucille,” he shouted, “ the 
water.” 

The defense of frontier houses against the 
attacks of the wild inhabitants of the forest 
was not unlike that of medieval castles. In 
both cases, lack of artillery forced the at¬ 
tacking party to depend for success upon 
assault, destruction by fire, or starvation of 
the garrison. The last-named method was 
seldom resorted to by the Indians. Defense 
against them resolved itself, therefore, into 
frustrating sudden and unexpected attacks, 
and of quenching fires on the shingled roofs 
of the houses. 

The wise forethought that had provided 
water for putting out fires had not over¬ 
looked the value of the same element in de¬ 
fense against assault. When the first alarm 
was given, the half-breed maid had been set 
to work heating cauldrons of water over the 
kitchen fire. The moment had now come for 
its use. As the Mohawks, at least a score in 


302 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


number, pressed forward to what they 
meant should be the final assault, a loose 
plank in the floor of the projecting second 
story was lifted quietly from its place, di¬ 
rectly over their heads. Then, from the 
hands of half a dozen peasant women, act¬ 
ing under the direction of the quiet-man¬ 
nered mistress of the house, as many buckets 
of boiling water were dashed upon the heads 
of the unsuspecting enemy. 

The effect was comparable to that of a 
blast of grape-shot, or of a modern machine 
gun, upon a compact mass of fighters. Half 
a dozen Iroquois, gasping for breath and 
writhing in pain, sank to the ground, where 
their tortured bodies received a second and 
fatal drenching. Three or four others 
crawled slowly and painfully away, seeking 
shelter in which to die. The remainder, 
smarting from burns, but not disabled, ran 
to the protection of the forest. 

The defenders lost no time in clearing the 
doorway of the bodies that cumbered it, and 
closing and double-barring the door. Then 
they took stock of their losses. These were 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 303 

serious. Three Frenchmen lay dead on the 
floor. With them was the Huron, La 
Motte’s guide. The Indian had proved a 
better fighter than the lieutenant had 
thought. Racial hatreds, pent up since boy¬ 
hood, had at last found a vent, and the 
Huron had attacked the destroyers of his 
nation with the fury of a wildcat. Three of 
them went down under his tomahawk; then 
he succumbed to a score of wounds. 

Of the dozen Frenchmen who were left, 
not more than half were unhurt. Two were 
so badly wounded that, to them, death was a 
matter of hours. The seignior, whose sturdy 
frame had been foremost in the defense, had 
miraculously escaped serious injury, though 
a knife-thrust in the thigh and a deep cut 
from a hatchet in the heavy muscles of his 
left shoulder would have been thought such 
by most men. Louis, La Motte, and the ser¬ 
geant all smarted from cuts and bruises, but 
were not disabled. 

The women of the garrison now assumed 
a role more congenial than that of scalding 
the assailants. Their hands, deft and gentle 


304 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


in spite of years of hard toil, staunched 
bleeding wounds, then applied healing salves 
and soft, linen bandages. The badly 
wounded men were placed in beds in the 
care of one of the younger girls. The 
women then resumed their assigned posts, to 
help further in the defense. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


“ Do you think the Mohawks are 
through? ” Louis asked his uncle, as the 
latter emerged from his bedroom where his 
wounds had been dressed, and joined him at 
a loophole. The older man was pale from 
loss of blood, hut his step was firm and his 
eye bright. 

“ I fear not, Louis,” he said. “ The fel¬ 
lows who made the assault have probably 
had enough, for I doubt if many of them got 
away without a taste of your aunt’s cook¬ 
ing.” The old man laughed grimly at his 
own jest. “ But we have seen nothing of 
your old enemy, Fighting Wolf,” he con¬ 
tinued, “ and I can’t believe he would fail to 
have a hand in a raid on this settlement. He 
seems, from what you told me of your winter 
journey, to have a grudge to settle with you, 
as well as with Margaret and me. If he is 
alive, we shall hear from him.” 

“ What do you suppose has happened to 
Margaret? ” asked Louis. “ As the Mo- 

305 


306 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


hawks came from the south, I fear she and 
her family had no warning of their ap¬ 
proach.” 

“ One can never be sure what a kind 
Providence may have ordered, but I fear 
much that all of that family are dead or 
prisoners of the Indians,” answered the 
seignior solemnly. “ Perrot’s boy saw a 
smoke to the south. That could only be my 
cousin’s house, and the chance of escape 
from a surprise attack was very small.” 

As the seignior finished speaking, a chorus 
of yells burst from the woods that bordered 
his fields. First came howls of dismay, as a 
newly-arrived band of Indians saw and 
heard of the havoc wrought among their as¬ 
sociates by the French. Then followed a 
series of yells, the vindictiveness of which 
blanched the faces of the women in the 
house, and even sent a chill through the 
blood of the sturdiest of the men. It was 
the terrible war-cry of the Iroquois an¬ 
nouncing their determination to exact blood 
for blood, life for life, the agony of torture 
for the sufferings of their comrades. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 307 

The activities of the Mohawks now began 
to show the effects of real leadership. 
Fighting Wolf was in command. The stub¬ 
born defense of his home by Baptiste Per- 
rot had given him and half his force a busy 
two hours. No amount of bravery and de¬ 
termination, however, could long hold a 
simple farmhouse against forty well-armed 
Indian warriors. Baptiste and three of his 
children had been struck down by bullets as 
they stood at loopholes. Then a savage as¬ 
sault, and the all too common story of a 
frontier family wiped out of existence. The 
escape of the lad who had brought the warn¬ 
ing to the seignior only balanced the loss of 
the little adopted English boy, Charley; for, 
in their blood-lust, the Mohawks made no 
distinction of race, or age, or sex. 

In their new disposition, twenty Iroquois 
spread themselves over the black surface of 
the fields and meadows. Thanks to the pre¬ 
cautions taken by Dupuy, no shelter was 
available for them within a hundred yards of 
the house. Beyond this limit, however, 
stumps and a few blackened logs dotted the 


308 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


ground, and, from behind them, came a long- 
range, but still dangerous, fire. 

Another band, of about equal strength, 
now took possession of the empty barns and 
storehouses. These structures had been 
loopholed for defense, but no men could be 
spared to man them. In the shelter of these 
buildings, the Iroquois made their final 
preparations for the destruction of the block¬ 
house. 

It was inevitable that the Indians should 
now resort to the use of fire. The stone 
walls of the house were impregnable to as¬ 
sault, except at the door-openings, and sad 
experience had taught the danger of being 
caught under the overhanging second story. 
Realizing these facts as well as the assailants 
themselves, Dupuy sent Louis and La Motte 
to the stations in the attic from which they 
could, if need be, throw water on the shingle 
roof. 

As he passed through the attic rooms to 
his new position, Louis noticed that he 
walked on earth, not on wood. His curiosity 
aroused, he investigated with his toe, and 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 309 

found that the heavy planks of the floor 
were covered with about three inches of dirt. 

“ More of my uncle’s foresight,” said the 
lad to himself. “ No wonder the Mohawks 
have not often been able to drive him from 
his estate.” 

The earth-covered floor was, in fact, the 
seignior’s last defense against his savage 
enemies, and their no less savage ally, fire. 
Upon it, he had staked his life and that of 
those who looked to his courage and skill for 
safety. 

The two young men arrived at their 
stations none too soon. Even as Louis lifted 
the trap-door to which he had been assigned, 
a sharp “ swish,” followed by a thud, told of 
the arrival of a fire-arrow. 

Special equipment for throwing fire¬ 
brands had been brought on their expedition 
by the Iroquois. Half a dozen powerful 
bows had been provided with a liberal 
supply of unusually long arrows. From 
their English allies, a small amount of wire 
had been procured with which to attach the 
brands to the arrows. 


310 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The single arrow was followed by a dozen 
others, all shot from behind the shelter of the 
barns. There was no possible way to reach 
the senders; all that could be done was to 
extinguish the fires that were started, before 
they could spread enough to be dangerous. 

To do his work effectively, Louis stood 
upright on the top step of the stairs up 
which he had climbed to the trap-door. Im¬ 
mediately the Mohawks opened upon him 
with a heavy fire, not only from the barns 
but, it seemed to him, from behind every 
stump and log within range. It did not need 
the vicious spatting of bullets on the roof to 
warn him that his work could not be done in 
that way. Thereafter, he kept as much as 
possible under cover, wetting a large part of 
the roof by throwing water through the 
hatchway, and only occasionally sticking out 
his head to note conditions. 

The attention of both Louis and La Motte 
was naturally given to the side from which 
the arrows came. By accident or intent, 
however, three of the blazing missiles were 
shot so high that they landed on the farther 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 311 


side. Here they flared and sputtered un¬ 
noticed and undisturbed. Two burned 
themselves out harmlessly; the third blazed 
for a time, died down, flared up for a mo¬ 
ment, then expired. Between two shingles, 
however, appeared a tiny flame, hardly vis¬ 
ible in the light of the sun. For a moment 
it, too, flickered, as if about to die out. But 
the shingles were dry, and the flame spread, 
still unnoticed. 

Soon there came to Louis’ ears, even 
above the continuous sound of rifle fire, a 
crackling that grew quickly into a roar. 
Then, through the open trap-door, a blast of 
smoke, hot and stifling, smote him in the 
face. Disregarding the bullets that con¬ 
tinued to hum over the hatchway, he sprang 
to the top of the stairs. A glance at the 
blazing roof showed that it was now too late 
to check the flames. Already the shingles 
were aflame over a quarter of the sloping 
area; even the heavier planks underneath 
were burning fiercely. 

An outburst of triumphant yells mingled 
with the reports of guns as Louis appeared 


312 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


again above the roof; yells that had been 
suppressed lest they should call the attention 
of the defenders to the spread of the flames. 

Further exposure of himself was useless, 
and the lad, sick at heart, again found 
shelter in the attic. It seemed to him to 
matter little, however, whether or not the 
Mohawks’ bullets found their mark. 
Escape from the burning building was im¬ 
possible, and the end might as well come 
from a rifle-ball as from suffocation in the 
flames. And how could he face his uncle 
with the tale of the disaster his carelessness 
had brought? 

As the lad’s foot touched the earth- 
covered floor, La Motte rushed to his side. 

“ Quick,” he said, “ tell the seignior the 
roof is all ablaze. The fire started behind 
me, and I didn’t see it until it was too late 
to stop it. But I will try to check it here 
while you get help.” 

Relieved, even at such a moment, at the 
thought that he was not alone to blame for 
the catastrophe that threatened, Louis 
sprang down the stairs. A moment later he 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 313 


reappeared, followed by his uncle. Then up 
the three flights of stairs that led from the 
basement, a bucket-brigade was formed, em¬ 
bracing every person in the building not 
needed at the loopholes, and large enough 
to handle a bucket. 

Steadily water began to pass from the 
well in the basement to the seignior and his 
two helpers in the attic. No energy was 
wasted in fighting the fire in the roof; in¬ 
stead, the attic floor with its earth covering 
was so thoroughly wet that water ran in 
streams to the floor below. 

By the time the layer of earth had been 
thoroughly saturated, flames were pouring 
into the attic through a dozen holes in the 
roof sheeting. When the supporting rafters 
began to blaze, the seignior and his assistants 
descended to the floor below. 

“ We can do little now,” he said, “ but to 
wait for the fire in the roof to burn itself out, 
and pray that the earth covering of the floor 
may prevent it from spreading to this 
story.” 

The sound of firing had now ceased. 


314 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Little use was there for the assailants to 
waste ammunition upon victims apparently 
devoted to a death far more cruel than lead 
could bring. But more terrifying than the 
roar of rifles was that of the burning roof, 
punctuated as it was by the sound of falling 
timbers, as beam after beam burned 
through. Then, with a crash that shook the 
building to its stone foundation, the heavy 
rooftree came down. 

An avalanche of burning brands that 
came down the attic stairs was quickly 
quenched; then the seignior mounted the 
steps. Bucket after bucket was passed to 
him. With these, he succeeded in extin¬ 
guishing the burning fragments of timber 
over a little area around the stairway open¬ 
ing. Then, with the assistance of Louis and 
La Motte, the flames were fought back, little 
by little, until they were confined to the top 
logs of the sides of the house. Fully a 
quarter of an hour was required to bring the 
fire in these under control, for it had pene¬ 
trated deeply into the sound wood and 
burned with the heat of a blast furnace. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 315 


During the fight against the fire, the three 
men were in full view of Mohawks who 
watched from the edge of the forest. By 
crouching low, however, and keeping away 
from the edges of the floor on which they 
worked, they were out of sight of all their 
enemies within rifle range. The savages, 
enraged at the miscarriage of their mur¬ 
derous plans, poured a heavy fire at and over 
the house, but their bullets buried themselves 
in the walls or whistled harmlessly over¬ 
head. The Mohawks had lost their fight. 

Balked in their main purpose, the Indians 
vented their rage upon such property as 
they could reach. A dozen bands set out 
through the woods to destroy the deserted 
homes of the tenants. Others ranged the 
woods in search of the cattle pasturing there. 
Those who remained made a bonfire of the 
bams and other buildings that had been their 
shelter. 

Like little children, these Mohawks 
squatted just out of range to enjoy the fas¬ 
cinating, though terrible, spectacle of the 
burning buildings. Then, when the last 


316 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


blazing wall of logs had crashed to the 
ground, they disappeared with a yell into the 
forest. 

The savages were out of sight but a few 
minutes, however. When they reappeared, 
they were laden with bundles of various 
sizes, the booty of the raid: clothing, guns, 
kettles, and the meat of slaughtered animals. 
Thus burdened, they marched along the 
border of the forest toward the river. 

To the watchers in the blockhouse, the 
retreat of the Mohawks was like the passing 
of a nightmare. To most of them, the raid 
meant the loss of all they possessed, except 
the little they had brought in their canoes. 
Months of hard labor and years of depriva¬ 
tion would be required to replace what a 
day had destroyed. But the Indians had 
been powerless to destroy their seeded fields, 
and, for this blessing, they were truly 
thankful. 

As the band of Mohawks approached the 
boat-landing, a flotilla of heavy elm-bark 
canoes, each paddled by one warrior, ap¬ 
peared up the river. Soon the entire band 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 317 


had embarked and had disappeared to the 
south. 

The occupants of the blockhouse were too 
wise in the ways of Indians to relax their 

vigilance in the slightest because of the de- 

* 

parture of the canoes. Their fighting men 
were too few in number to allow even of the 
sending out of scouts. They must simply 
outwait Indian patience or run the risk of an 
attack by parties that might have been left 
in ambush. 

For hours the forest lay in dead silence. 
Not even the warning chatter of a squirrel 
or the cry of a jay indicated the presence of 
man or beast under its cover. But, as the 
sun touched the tops of the elms on the 
western bank of the Richelieu, a chorus of 
yells of anger and disappointment came 
over the black fields to the house, and twenty 
stalwart Mohawks rose from the bushes that 
bordered the clearing. 

No burden of booty had been left to 
hamper the movements of this band, and as 
they moved toward the river, the craft that 
came to meet them were of the finest type of 


318 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


birch-bark canoe. It was a band of fighters, 
the chosen companions of the fighting chief 
of the expedition. 

That chief now revealed himself, and no 
spy-glass was required to enable the 
watchers in the blockhouse to pick the dis¬ 
torted countenance and athletic frame of 
Fighting Wolf from among his followers. 

Louis Dupuy, watching from a second- 
story loophole, was the first to identify his 
old enemy. 

“ There he is,” he shouted to La Motte 
who stood at the next loophole. “ The big 
fellow who has just come through the 
bushes. I knew the old rascal must have had 
a hand in this matter, though I hadn’t had a 
glimpse of him before.” 

“ I see him,” answered the lieutenant, 
“ and you are right. But who is that just 
coming out of the bushes? He doesn’t look 
much like a Mohawk.” 

“A Mohawk!” exclaimed Louis. “La 
Motte, it is Margaret! ” It was indeed the 
form of Louis’ cousin that stumbled over the 
clods in the wake of the chief. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 319 


For hours the girl had lain, bound hand 
and foot, under the trees that bordered the 
fields, hearing the sounds of the conflict as 
it raged around the blockhouse, but helpless 
to aid her beleaguered friends except with 
her prayers. Her ears, trained by harsh ex¬ 
perience, told the story of attack and defense 
almost as well as eyes could have done. In¬ 
termittent reports of guns from various 
quarters said that the sharpshooting Mo¬ 
hawks were being held in check; the 
crackle of flames, followed by triumphant 
yells, blanched her cheeks as if she herself 
were in the burning building; the hiss of 
water on flaming brands, followed by heavy 
fire from assailants and defenders, was to 
her a vivid story of victory. 

While the heart of the brave girl rejoiced 
at the escape of her friends from destruction, 
she could not conceal from herself that their 
successful defense only added to the peril of 
her own situation. And she well knew what 
Indian cruelty and revenge could do to their 
victims. 

Whatever might be the ultimate intention 


320 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


of the Mohawks toward her, they evidently 
meant no present harm. For the whole of 
the afternoon Margaret lay unmolested, suf¬ 
fering only from the tightness of her bands 
and from the clouds of mosquitoes that 
swarmed upon her. Then, when the attempt 
at an ambush was given up, her feet were 
unbound and she was bidden to rise. As a 
precaution against any attempt to get away, 
one end of a long thong of rawhide was tied 
around her neck. The other end, Fighting 
Wolf fastened to his own belt. He evi¬ 
dently intended to run no risk of an escape. 
Thus led, like a haltered beast, her ankles 
and feet stiff and numb from long binding, 
Margaret stumbled after her captor to the 
waiting canoes. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


It was a sober group of victors that 
gathered about the fireplace in the sei¬ 
gniorage on the evening following the battle. 
The excitement of conflict was passed. 
Wounds that had gone unnoticed during the 
heat of the battle now smarted and burned. 
Deeper still was the hurt from the loss of 
friends, for faces long familiar on the sei¬ 
gniorage would be seen no more. On many, 
too, the burden of replacing houses and 
cattle destroyed by the marauders was 
already beginning to press. 

Louis’ mind was intent upon the fate of 
his cousin. In fact, he had already sug¬ 
gested to his uncle that a party be organized 
to follow her captors before nightfall. The 
seignior had disapproved of the plan. 

“ The Mohawks will be on the watch for 
pursuers,” he said. “ La Motte was prob¬ 
ably recognized by some of them who were 
with you on last winter’s expedition, and 

321 


322 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


they would, naturally, expect a French of¬ 
ficer to be followed by French troops. That 
may be the reason for cutting their siege 
short. There have been times when they 
have cooped us up for a week. No, you had 
best wait until to-morrow, when we shall see 
what has become of my cousins and of the 
Perrots. Then we will try to think of some 
way to help poor Margaret.” 

There was little hopefulness in the sei¬ 
gnior’s tone or words. Sad experience with 
the fate of unfortunates who had fallen into 
the clutches of the vengeful Iroquois left 
him little ground for hope regarding his 
niece. 

j- 

Louis, with less experience, was more op¬ 
timistic. “ There must be some way to help 
her,” he said. “ I would be willing to run 
any risk to do it.” 

“ I know you would, Louis,” the seignior 
replied. “ But how could you possibly get 
Margaret out of the hands of such a force 
as Fighting Wolf has with him? ” 

“ I don’t know,” answered the lad. “ It 
may be that nothing at all can be done, but 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 323 


somehow I feel that I must make the 
attempt.” 

During the conversation, the sergeant had 
sat in silence on a near-by bench. Now he 
arose and walked to Louis’ side. 

“ If the lad wishes to follow the trail of 
the Mohawks, I will go with him,” he said. 

Louis was a little surprised, not at the 
offer of assistance, but at the fatherly tone 
with which the usually cold Dumont spoke 
of him. As a matter of fact, Louis’ actions 
during the day, in getting La Motte across 
the river and in exposing himself without 
stint on the roof of the house, had won the 
older man’s heart. 

Of resentment, because of the familiar 
tone used by the sergeant, Louis had none. 
His old-world prejudices and pride of 
birth had now completely disappeared, for¬ 
gotten amid the pressure of experiences in 
which a man was of value solely because of 
what he had within him in muscle, in heart, 
and in brain. Rejoiced to have the approval 
of such a man as Dumont, Louis shook his 
hand warmly. 


324 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


“ I hoped you would go with me,” he said. 
“ I believe if any one in Canada can rescue 
Margaret, you can. But are two enough for 
such a trip? Should we not have at least 
three? ” 

“ It would be much better to have at least 
three,” replied Dumont. 

“ I should like to be the third.” It was 
La Motte who spoke. The lieutenant had 
sat in silence before the fire, but had not 
missed a word of the conversation. 

No reply was made at once to the lieu¬ 
tenant’s offer. It was apparent that it did 
not meet with the full approval of the older 
men. At length the seignior spoke. 

“ I know of no more delicate task that can 
come to a man,” he said, “ than to follow a 
war-party in the attempt to rescue a 
prisoner. On an ordinary journey through 
hostile territory, a man risks only his own 
life. If he blunders, he pays. But, in a 
case like this, a false move, a misstep, a 
splash of a paddle, may bring destruction, 
not only to the careless one, but to the very 
person he is trying to help.” 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 325 

“ I realize all this,” answered the lieu¬ 
tenant, “ and I know I am not much of a 
woodsman. Nevertheless, I must, in some 
way, attempt to assist your niece. If the 
sergeant decides that I should not go with 
him, I will go alone.” 

The seignior was surprised at the evident 
feeling in the heart of the young man. 
Before he could reply, however, Dumont 
answered the lieutenant. 

“ I shall be glad to have you with us,” he 
said. “ I know nothing of your skill in the 
woods, though the journey of last winter 
should have taught you something of life in 
the forest. But your heart seems to be in 
this matter, and that, sometimes, means 
more than skill or experience. Louis is 
already a good woodsman. We two can 
take care of the pinches, if need be, and your 
strength will be of use at other times.” 

Louis was rejoiced to have the company 
of his friend on the perilous journey that lay 
before him. He knew the loyalty of La 
Motte’s heart, and trusted to it to supply 
any lack in woodcraft. In fact, however, as 


326 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


he knew, the lieutenant was a much better 
woodsman than his own words would imply. 
Of unusually keen mind and observant 
nature, he had come back from Deerfield 
well fitted to care for himself amid the 
dangers of the forest. 

“ Do you agree with my uncle that we 
should wait until to-morrow before start¬ 
ing? ” Louis asked Dumont. The lad could 
hardly bring himself to postpone the jour¬ 
ney for so long. 

“ I fully agree,” answered the sergeant. 
“ The Mohawks will keep together, at least 
until they get well away from French ter¬ 
ritory. That means they cannot travel fast, 
for their canoes are slow, good as they are. 
We shall have no difficulty in overhauling 
them. They are, no doubt, camped now 
somewhere along the Richelieu. If we 
should attempt to pass them to-night, we 
should be detected at once. By to-morrow 
night, they should be on Lake Champlain. 
You noticed, perhaps, that the moon is in its 
last quarter. By starting early to-morrow 
afternoon, we should reach Champlain by 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 327 


dark. Then we will get as far south on the 
lake as we can before the moon rises. Of 
course, we may blunder upon their camp, 
but I think the chances are good that, by 
keeping away from shores and islands, we 
can avoid them. When it begins to get 
light, we will camp at some spot that gives a 
view of all the channels of the lake. This, 
we will repeat every night. In this way, we 
should be able to keep in touch with the 
Iroquois, without much risk of being seen.” 

The seignior expressed his hearty ap¬ 
proval of Dumont’s plan, and the sergeant 
departed to gather a supply, sufficient for 
many weeks, of hard bread, jerked venison, 
and dried fruits. 

In the forenoon of the following day, two 
canoes left the seigniory, bound up-stream. 
One, especially selected for speed, contained 
the newly-formed rescue party; the other 
carried the seignior and two of his sturdy 
tenants. 

An hour brought the party to the farm of 
Baptiste Perrot. Even before they landed, 
the sad story of the utter destruction of a 


328 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


frontier home was clear to them. A rec¬ 
tangle of white ashes, from which a thread 
of blue smoke still rose, marked the site of 
the house. Whitened bones that crumbled 
to dust at a touch showed, here and there, 
the relics of its defenders. Half-burned 
outbuildings, and the offal of slaughtered 
cattle completed the scene of desolation. 

At the clearing of De La Ronde, the de¬ 
struction had been less complete. Only some 
outbuildings had been destroyed by fire. The 
squalid shelter which served as a home still 
stood, though no smoke came from the chim¬ 
ney of mud and sticks, for the house was 
tenantless. 

Here the attack had been a complete sur¬ 
prise. No intimation of danger had come to 
the De La Rondes until the war-cry of the 
Mohawks rose from the forest. It was fol¬ 
lowed by the rush of two dozen savages 
across the narrow strip of field to the house. 
Having no possibility of defense against 
such a force, the family made for the land¬ 
ing, in the faint hope of escaping by water. 
But when still a hundred feet from the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 329 


canoe, ten or twelve Mohawks rose from hid¬ 
ing behind stumps and logs near the water¬ 
front. 

Completely trapped, the four refugees, 
for Vincent de La Ronde was still with his 
parents, dropped behind such shelter as they 
could find. The two men and Margaret 
opened fire with their rifles. The bullets 
found victims, but the rush of the Mohawks 
was not stayed. Thirty of them surrounded 
the little group, not firing, for they were 
intent upon prisoners. 

Indolent and shiftless as De La Ronde 
and his son were in the ordinary affairs of 
life, they had in them the blood of a long line 
of fighting ancestors, and they met the at¬ 
tack of the Iroquois as valiantly as cru¬ 
sader ever sustained infidel onset. With 
clubbed rifles they smashed down the guards 
of the savages. When gun-stocks shattered, 
they fought with the heavy iron barrels. 
But such a contest could last but a minute. 
Tomahawk and knife soon did their deadly 
work, not only upon the two men, but upon 
the wife and mother, who was sacrificed to 


330 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


the rage which resistance had roused in the 
breasts of the assailants. Margaret, helpless 
after the discharge of her rifle, was seized by 
the Mohawk leader, the cruel-faced Fight¬ 
ing Wolf. 

To Dupuy and the sergeant, the story of 
destruction was told by what they saw in the 
little clearing, almost as plainly as if related 
in words. The unburned house, the blood- 
stained and trampled earth of the field; to 
men experienced in the savage life of the 
frontier, the tale was complete. 

By mid-afternoon, Louis and his two com¬ 
panions had bidden good-bye to the seignior 
and had set off on their long journey to the 
south. The river was smooth, and the day 
just cool enough to invite them to put forth 
their strength at the paddles. Conse¬ 
quently, the sun had not yet touched the 
trees that overhung the west banks before 
the river widened out before the travelers 
into the broad expanse of Lake Champlain. 
A fireless camp was made, and a hearty, but 
cold, supper eaten, to prepare the travelers 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 331 


for many hours of hard labor, for, before the 
moon should rise, they must pass the 
Iroquois. 

During the trip up the Richelieu, 
Dumont, who sat in the stern of the canoe, 
had watched with surprise the skill with 
which La Motte used his paddle. Scarcely a 
ripple was formed on the smooth surface of 
the water as the wide blade of wood sank 
and rose, sank and rose, in perfect time with 
the paddle of Louis Dupuy, who sat in the 
bow. With a Frenchman’s quick adapta¬ 
bility, the lieutenant, in a few days of prac¬ 
tice at Montreal, had acquired a skill little 
inferior to that of the Indian who instructed 
him. 

Now, as the trio awaited the coming of 
twilight before starting up the lake, Dumont 
questioned the officer regarding his experi¬ 
ences with the Deerfield expedition, and on 
the various hunting trips with which he had 
broken the monotony of life at Montreal. 
Before the conversation ended, the sergeant 
had come to the conclusion that, instead of 
being something of a burden, as he had an- 


332 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


ticipated, La Motte would be of real value in 
the solution of his difficult problem. 

Trusting that the Iroquois encampment 
was many miles from the northern end of 
the lake, the start for the night’s journey 
was begun soon after the sun had set, when 
there were still two hours before real dark¬ 
ness would come. Without incident the 
party toiled steadily at the paddles, as, grad¬ 
ually, the afterglow in the western sky 
swung toward the north, and, as gradually, 
faded from a glorious combination of pinks 
and blues to a somber gray. 

As long as daylight lasted, the three men 
talked freely, and Louis and La Motte 
lightened their toil with story and jest, and 
quick repartee. But when darkness had 
settled over the lake, all conversation ceased, 
lest the still night air should carry even the 
most subdued tone to listening hostile ears. 
So, for mile after mile, the canoe sped on, 
silent as the night itself. 

Suddenly Louis stopped the steady swing 
of his paddle and lifted the blade in the air 
as a warning signal. Then he pointed with 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 333 


it to a spot which a sailor would have said 
was off the starboard bow. There his eye 
had for an instant caught what he thought 
was the glow of fire, just a point of light 
against the black mass of forest that rose 
from the edge of the water, half a mile away. 

The canoe was allowed to drift slowly 
ahead, while all eyes searched the shore. 
Nothing was to be seen, however. The 
movement of the canoe had brought between 
it and the light, if light there was, some con¬ 
cealing obstruction. Dumont was on the 
point of resuming the journey when again 
the glow appeared. Only for a moment was 
it visible, but it left no doubt that it came 
from burning coals; that Louis had not been 
deceived, as the sergeant had thought pos¬ 
sible, by a phosphorescent glow of rotting 
wood. 

In lowest whispers, Dumont now con¬ 
sulted with his two companions regarding 
the course to be pursued. There could be lit¬ 
tle doubt, he said, that the fire came from the 
encampment of the Mohawk band which 
they were following. Having now located 


334 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


the enemy, it would be comparatively easy 
and safe to maintain touch with him by keep¬ 
ing on a few miles up the lake, and there 
camping on some high point from which his 
movements on the morrow could be observed. 

There was a chance, however, that, by 
going in close to the Iroquois camp, some 
means of rescuing Margaret could be found. 
In such a course there was some risk, not to 
themselves, for they could easily elude pur¬ 
suit in the darkness, but to their hope of a 
rescue, which would be thwarted if the In¬ 
dians were once placed on their guard. His 
own opinion was that they should go in close 
enough to the shore to see, at least, how Mar¬ 
garet was treated, and how closely her cap- 
tors kept watch over her. Even if a rescue 
were not now possible, such information 
might be invaluable in some future attempt. 

The sergeant’s recommendation suited the 
mood of his young companions, and prepara¬ 
tions were made to carry them out. Louis 
and La Motte silently laid aside their paddles 
and took their rifles, repriming the guns 
lest the dampness of the night air might have 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 335 


made them unreliable. In case of an at¬ 
tempted rescue, it was arranged that Du¬ 
mont should go ashore alone, covered by the 
guns of his two companions. 

If the course of the canoe had heretofore 
been silent as that of a bird of the night, it 
now became like that of a floating spirit as 
it moved under the slow impulse of Du¬ 
mont’s paddle. But the sergeant would not 
trust unnecessarily, even to his great skill, 
in a match with the keen ears of an Indian 
warrior. A gentle breeze, scarcely more 
than a zephyr, blew toward the shore. Tak¬ 
ing advantage of this, Dumont paddled to 
a point opposite the encampment, then let 
the light craft drift slowly shoreward. 

The camp was now in plain view. A 
dozen points of light indicated as many 
smoldering fires. Occasionally, a fitful flare 
of flame lighted up the surrounding trees, 
and showed in silhouette the canoes pulled 
up along the shore. As the distance de¬ 
creased, the Mohawks themselves could be 
seen, wrapped in their light deerskin blan¬ 
kets, and stretched at length before the fires. 


336 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


With anxious eyes, the three men sought 
for the homespun dress of Margaret among 
the skin-clad forms. For a time, the search 
was in vain, then one of the sleepers, a little 
apart from the rest, partly threw off its 
blanket and exposed a cloth-covered shoul¬ 
der. It was Margaret. 

The canoe was now within a hundred 
yards of the shore, still drifting slowly be¬ 
fore the breeze. By a prearranged signal, 
Dumont indicated that a rescue would be 
attempted, and the three waited in tense 
silence for the moment when they could 
undertake it. Now the shore was but two 
hundred feet away, now a hundred. It 
seemed to Louis his nerves must snap under 
the strain of waiting, when suddenly the tall 
form of a warrior rose from behind the 
silhouette of a canoe. It was joined by an¬ 
other, both black against the faint glow of 
the fires. The Mohawks, usually careless in 
the matter of watchfulness at night, were 
apparently taking no chances of surprise 
while still in enemy territory, and the two 
men had been posted as sentries. Uncon- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 337 


scious, evidently, of the nearness of enemies, 
the two watchmen moved toward one of the 
fires, either to replenish it, or to seek its 
warmth, for the night was cold. 

The situation of the three Frenchmen was 
now critical. So near were they to the shore 
that the slightest flare of the fires must have 
revealed the white bark of their canoe. 
Fortunately for them, the two sentries con¬ 
tented themselves with warming their hands 
before the smoldering embers, and though 
one of them faced the lake, and seemed to 
be looking directly at the canoe, the nearer 
glow of the coals blinded him to the faint 
reflection of light from the little craft. 

Through Louis’ mind now flashed the 
warning words of his uncle, that in the at¬ 
tempt to help one whom the Indians had 
taken captive, the slightest slip may work 
irretrievable harm. Only by chance, or the 
workings of a benevolent Providence, had 
he and his companions escaped a situation 
that would have wrecked all hope of a rescue. 
Even now, nothing but supreme skill on the 
part of the sergeant could prevent disaster. 


338 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


The sergeant, however, was equal to the 
situation. Silently he swung the canoe 
around until only its stern was visible from 
shore. Then, with slow and measured 
strokes, into which he put the full strength 
of his sinewy arms, he drove the craft away 
from the perilous shore. Only when he had 
gone a full mile did he relax his caution, and 
allow his companions to resume their pad¬ 
dles. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


To Margaret, the events of the past two 
days had been like the disturbed fancies of 
a troubled dream. So many times had she 
escaped the clutches of the Iroquois, in the 
repeated attacks upon her home, that it 
seemed almost impossible that she was, at 
last, a prisoner in their hands. The sudden 
assault, the vain rush for the canoe, the quick 
death of her relatives; all these had left her 
brain in such a whirl that she hardly noticed 
that she herself, securely bound, was led 
away a captive. 

During the long day’s journey in a canoe, 
however, she had time to think calmly about 
her situation. That her friends would at¬ 
tempt to rescue her, she did not doubt, and 
she realized that such an attempt must neces¬ 
sarily be made at night. She resolved, there¬ 
fore, that under no circumstance would she 
allow herself to go to sleep when the Mo¬ 
hawk camp was in darkness; if an attempt 
at rescue were made, she would be ready. 

339 


340 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


After the first day of her captivity, Mar¬ 
garet had not been bound, except that, at 
night, a long thong of rawhide, tied securely 
around her neck, was attached to the belt of 
one of Fighting Wolf’s trusted followers. 

As this savage was a healthy animal who 
ate heartily and consequently slept heavily 
and long, Margaret lay through the nights 
undisturbed. 

Analyzing the situation much as the elder 
Dupuy had done, she entertained little hope 
of a rescue at the first night’s camp. In 
fact, on that night she did not attempt to 
keep awake. On the second night of her 
captivity, however, all her senses were on the 
alert for some indication of the coming of 
her friends. Fortunately, her guardian 
chose a resting place near the beach, and she 
was able to lie in such a position as to watch 
the dark surface of the lake without turning 
her head. 

For hours the girl lay thus, hoping to 
detect some sign of the coming of rescuers; 
hoping, yet dreading, for she knew that 
sentries had been posted and she feared the 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 341 

would-be rescuers would come only to their 
own destruction. 

As the hours passed, the long strain of 
looking intensely at nothing began to tell, 
and in spite of Margaret’s resolution, she 
occasionally caught herself dozing. As she 
opened her eyes after one of these brief “ cat 
naps,” her faculties keen from the momen¬ 
tary relaxation, she thought she detected a 
slight blur of light against the black back¬ 
ground of the night. Then, as the minutes 
passed, the blur took form, and she recog¬ 
nized the outlines of a canoe. Under the 
circumstances, she could not doubt that it 
contained friends. 

In an agony of suspense, the girl watched 
the drifting craft. As the only signal she 
dared give, she tossed her arm as if in rest¬ 
less sleep. Then she lay still, expecting at 
any moment the discharge of the sentries’ 
guns. When the canoe turned, and like a 
spirit passed away into the darkness, a flood 
of thanksgiving filled her heart. She knew 
that she was being sought and that the 
searchers were on their guard. 


342 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Again on the following night just before 
dawn, the canoe appeared, like a phantom 
craft drifting in toward shore. And again 
Margaret tossed her arm in recognition. 
But now she waved her arm in such a way 
as to indicate that the watchers in the canoe 
should depart. She hoped in this way, not 
only to warn her friends that it was dan¬ 
gerous to land, but to establish a simple code 
of communication. 

For four nights was this scene repeated, 
as the Mohawks leisurely made their way up 
Lake Champlain. Then came the hard, 
rough portage up the rapids at Ticonderoga. 
Launching again upon the placid waters of 
Lake George, the war-party divided. The 
greater part, those in elm-bark canoes, broke 
up into small hunting parties, cached their 
heavy craft, and disappeared among the 
fastnesses of the Adirondacks. Fighting 
Wolf and his select band of fighters, with 
their prisoner, kept on in their birch canoes 
toward the portage to the Hudson River, 
near the southern end of the lake. 

As the hours of the forenoon passed, Mar- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 343 


garet sensed that all was not well in the 
minds of her savage associates. She knew 
that provisions had run low, for the vora¬ 
cious appetites of the Mohawks had already 
consumed the supplies obtained on the 
Richelieu. But lack of a breakfast could 
not account for the extreme depression evi¬ 
dent in the faces and bearing of the Indians. 
Little by little, however, from such remarks 
as she was able to understand, she gathered 
that one of the Iroquois, a popular chieftain, 
was ill. 

Among these ignorant children of nature, 
illness was invariably ascribed to the malice 
of evil spirits. No natural causes whatever 
were recognized. As a matter of fact, the 
ailing chieftain, Growling Bear, had so 
gorged himself on the abundance of fresh 
meat obtained in the raid, that even his cast- 
iron digestive apparatus had rebelled. He 
was suffering from a severe attack of in¬ 
digestion. 

Heartless though the Iroquois were in 
dealing with their enemies, they had all the 
sympathy of the children that they were to- 


344 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 

ward those of their own tribe. The troubles 
of Growling Bear became the troubles of 
the whole band. Many and grotesque were 
the propositions made for his relief from the 
intense pain in his inwards. At length it 
was decided that the most hopeful sugges¬ 
tion was that for a feast on bear-meat. Pos¬ 
sibly the patient’s name suggested the rem¬ 
edy, also the fact that he belonged to the 
clan of the bear, and had an image of this 
animal tattooed on his breast. Being so 
much of a bear himself, it was probably 
thought that the spirits of the bears his 
friends would eat, would befriend him, and 
relieve him in his distress. 

In a “ medicine ” feast such as was pro¬ 
posed, however, no half-way measures would 
be effective. In order that the desired result 
might be attained, every participant, every 
member of the band, must gorge himself to 
the uttermost limit of his capacity; bear- 
meat must be consumed by the hundreds of 
pounds. And, of course, it was necessary, 
first, to get the bears. Half the party, ac¬ 
cordingly, disembarked at noon, and spread- 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 345 


ing out over a front of a mile along the 
eastern shore of the lake, combed the woods 
for the desired game. Shouts and the reports 
of rifles resounded among the hills, and soon 
a band of a dozen Indians appeared on the 
shore, carrying, slung from poles, a mother 
bear and her two cubs. This was a good 
start, but more bear-meat would be required 
to insure the effectiveness of the feast. For- 
tunately, this was forthcoming shortly be¬ 
fore sundown in the person of a huge male. 

Preparations for the feast were now 
rushed with all possible speed, and, before 
nightfall, great joints and slabs of the rich, 
oily meat were roasting over masses of glow¬ 
ing coals. Two hours later, the feast was in 
full progress. 

Half an hour sufficed to satisfy the crav¬ 
ings of even the empty stomachs of Indians. 
But this was only the beginning of the feast. 
Pound after pound in addition was forced 
down unwilling throats until nature began 
to rebel. Then, after a short but necessary 
delay, the process of stuffing was resumed, 
the feasters being encouraged to even 


346 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


greater extremes of self-sacrifice by the 
groans of the sufferer, who, as yet, had 
found no relief. 

Margaret, tied as usual to her guard, 
after eating moderately of the nourishing 
food, watched the progress of the feast. 
Her heart was heavy. The unwonted watch¬ 
fulness of her captors had made any attempt 
at rescue hopeless. Now the long journey 
over the two lakes was nearly over. In an¬ 
other day, she would be beyond the great 
stretch of neutral territory that lay between 
the St. Lawrence and the Hudson, and in 
the land of the Mohawks. Once there, res¬ 
cue would be almost impossible and she must 
prepare to meet whatever fate the desires or 
enmity of Fighting Wolf had in store for 
her. But as the feasters, one by one, reached 
a stage where no inducement could get an¬ 
other ounce of food down their throats, and 
lay back in their places in heavy slum¬ 
ber, a ray of hope came to her mind. If all 
the Iroquois should get in this condition and 
the white, silent canoe should again appear, 
she might escape. 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 347 


With eager eyes, the girl watched the 
diminishing number of feasters. Her own 
guard had long since succumbed, as had 
fully two-thirds of his companions. Now 
but three were left, now two, now one. But 
that one was Fighting Wolf. Anxiously 
Margaret had watched her captor for signs 
of failing capacity. To her dismay, she 
found that the Wolf was making only a pre¬ 
tence of eating, that the great quantities of 
meat that had been offered him had largely 
been stuck away under the blanket that was 
spread over his lap. Fighting Wolf was as 
alert as ever. 

Sick at heart, the girl lay back upon her 
blanket and turned her eyes toward the lake, 
whence alone could come help. Her half- 
formed resolve, that in case the canoe did not 
appear, she would take advantage of the 
half-dead condition of the feasters and flee 
to the woods, must be abandoned. 

Hour after hour Margaret watched, 
straining her eyes until they throbbed in 
their sockets as she attempted to pierce the 
darkness. At last she thought she saw the 


348 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


now-familiar blotch of light. In another 
minute, she was sure the canoe had come. 
Then, as a flare of light came from the dying 
fire, she waved her arm, this time as a signal 
to come. A moment later the little craft 
touched the shore and three shadowy forms 
emerged from it. 

Margaret now acted quickly. Silently 
she slipped from her blanket and to the side 
of her sleeping guard. In another instant 
she had possessed herself of his hunting 
knife, and of her own rifle which he had 
carried since her capture. A slash with the 
knife severed the thong that bound her to 
the Mohawk, and she sprang to her feet. 
The slight noise made by the girl in her 
movements had not gone undetected, how¬ 
ever, and, as she rose, she faced the Wolf. 
The savage was on his feet, but as he had 
not drawn knife nor tomahawk, the girl had 
an advantage over him, for she held her keen 
weapon ready for the throw. Her rifle was 
useless, for the flint had been removed. 

For an instant the Wolf stood still, then 
with a yell to arouse his sleeping mates, he 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 349 

leaped to one side and seized his tomahawk 
from his belt. At the movement, Margaret 
threw, but only grazed a shoulder. With 
another yell, the savage raised his tomahawk 
over the now unarmed girl. The little axe 
fell, but it fell harmless, for as the Wolf 
raised his arm, three rifle shots rang out and 
he sank, writhing in death agony, to the 
ground. 

A scene of utter confusion followed. The 
Mohawks, roused by the noise of the con¬ 
flict, but stupid from gluttony, seized their 
guns. Forms of friends, half-seen in the 
gloom, were fired upon. The fire was re¬ 
turned, and soon the score of savages divided 
into two yelling bands that shot more or less 
harmlessly at each other from behind the 
cover of trees and fallen logs. Before the 
sounds of this fight among friends died 
away, Margaret and her three rescuers were 
far out on the lake, leaving on the strand the 
half-dozen canoes of the Iroquois, so slashed 
and broken as to render pursuit impossible. 

It is ten years later. Again, on the 


350 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


Dupuy seigniory, all is happy bustle, for a 
wedding feast is under preparation. At 
high noon the ceremony itself had been per¬ 
formed. Louis Dupuy had knelt before the 
altar with his uncle’s ward, the fair-haired 
Mercy, and Father Gregory had pro¬ 
nounced them man and wife. 

As the June sun touched the tree-tops 
across the Richelieu, the feast began. An 
even dozen were at the table. At the head 
was the elder Dupuy, now white of hair and 
beard, but still ruddy of face and erect of 
stature. At the other end was Madame 
Lucille, a little more frail than when we first 
saw her, but with the sweet peacefulness of 
her face unchanged by the years. Father 
Gregory had the place of honor at the host’s 
right hand. Next to him was Louis, with 
his bride. Beyond the girl sat the sergeant. 

On the other side of the table was a whole 
family. La Motte, now a seignior, in the 
uniform of a captain of the colonial troops, 
was separated from his wife, Margaret, by 
four little La Mottes whose plump cheeks 
told of the prosperity that their father’s 


ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 351 


energy and ability had brought to the old 
He La Ronde estate, his wife’s dowry. 

When the feast was over and the last toast 
had been drunk, the elder Dupuy rose to his 
feet. 

“ If I were an Indian orator,” he said, “ I 
should say that eleven years ago my heart 
went to dwell with my nephew Louis, whom 
I wished to succeed me in the possession of 
this estate. But, a year later, part of my 
heart was given to the little English girl who 
became my adopted daughter. I also wished 
her to he my heir. Now the two parts of 
my heart are reunited. Both Louis and 
Mercy have become not only my heirs, but 
my children, and I am happy.” 

Then turning to his nephew, he continued: 
“ It is many years, Louis, since I first struck 
an axe into a tree on this estate, to make a 
home for my wife and child. Through all 
those years I have held it against drought 
and storm and insect pest, and the horrible 
menace of the Mohawk. This task I now 
resign to you, for you have proved yourself 
worthy. As I learned, so have you, that 


352 ESCAPING THE MOHAWKS 


while rank is honorable, so also is honest 
toil, and that the worth of a man consists 
not in an inherited name, but in quality of 
heart and mind and body: the lesson that 
this America of ours teaches to those who 
will learn of her.” 


THE END 


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